JEREMY CORBYN fondly remembers his fellow rebel
MP and close friend Tony Benn - including their late-night escapade to
put up a commemorative plaque to Emily Wilding Davison in a
parliamentary broom cupboard
The death of Tony Benn is devastating to me, obviously to his
family and to millions all around Britain and the world who recognised
him as a friend, an honest man, and someone who passionately believed in
the cause of socialism and humanity.
Tony was an MP for 50 years, with only a very short break between a
sad defeat in Bristol East in 1983 and his election to Parliament as MP
for Chesterfield nine months later.
His contribution to Parliament was magnificent in every way. He saw
it as an institution to be revered and supported, but which he wanted to
make more effective.
He was a real democrat who understood the broad sweep of history and
how today's parliamentary democracy is a product of the Peasants'
Revolt, the English civil war, the Great Reform Act of 1832, the
Chartists and the radical movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Tony was a minister in the 1964-70 and 1974-79 Labour governments. A
far-thinking postmaster general, he went on to become minister of
technology.
He recognised Britain's need to develop high-quality cutting-edge
engineering as the way forward, and through his personal intervention he
saved the Concorde project from cancellation in 1974.
As minister for industry in the second Wilson government, Tony
developed the lessons of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders' work in 1971 as a
way of defending industry from the predators who only saw assets to be
stripped.
As secretary of state he steered through the public ownership of
shipbuilding and aircraft manufacture, supported the Triumph
Co-operative at Meriden and spoke at enormous Institute for Workers'
Control conferences.
I worked at the Engineering Union in the early 1970s and Tony came to
our offices to seek support for his industrial strategy because he felt
he was being obstructed by the dead hand of officialdom in Whitehall.
He encouraged us to produce a blueprint for workers' control of
British Leyland. Sadly he was moved on from his ministerial position
before this bold move could take place.
Some of those who vigorously opposed Tony in the 1980s have surfaced
again in the aftermath of his death, and are retrospectively trying to
blame him for Labour's 1983 election defeat.
Yet the manifesto on which that election was fought would be highly
appropriate today to deal with the finance and banking crisis that has
been visited upon the poorest people in Britain and, indeed, across
Europe.
The real reason for Labour's 1983 defeat was the defection of a
number of leading figures in the Labour Party to the SDP, allowing
Thatcher to be re-elected on the same vote as she had achieved in 1979
while calling it a triumph.
When the miners' strike took place in 1984-5 it coincided with Benn's
election campaign in Chesterfield - and what a pleasure it was to
campaign with him there, where he was elected and subsequently
re-elected.
The miners' strike in many ways saw Tony at his finest, tirelessly
travelling the country supporting picket lines and the Women Against Pit
Closures, managing to unite inner-city struggles with the mining
communities and always bringing a strength of internationalism into all
of his speeches, regardless of the fact that it might be at 5am on a
freezing picket line with an enormous menacing police presence
threatening the miners and their families.
Tony, apart from being a great writer of diaries and a highly
optimistic political philosopher, was fascinated by discussions and
ordinary people's stories.
For a time in the late 1980s we held meetings of the Independent Left
Corresponding Society, so named in memory of the radical correspondence
societies during the dark days for radicals in Britain in the early
part of the 19th century.
These meetings which included such luminaries as Ralph Miliband, Jim
Mortimer, Tariq Ali and Hilary Wainwright, took themes for discussion
about party structures, the development of democracy and the
effectiveness or otherwise of trade unions. In many ways this was my
university education.
Tony never shied away from supporting equality, anti-racism and
causes that didn't get much attention from the media or the political
Establishment.
He supported the black community in Bristol when they boycotted the
buses in 1959 because of the racism in the recruitment of drivers and
conductors. He wanted to negotiate and talk with Sinn Fein when it was
being isolated and ostracised.
Before the outbreak of the Gulf war in 1991 he went to Baghdad with
Edward Heath to try to obtain some kind of agreement, and memorably said
when the war started that George Bush Snr had declared himself at war
with humanity.
Tony later was hugely active in the foundation of the Stop the War
Coalition in 2001 and was president at the time of his death. He had
been an inspirational figure at every rally, particularly the
million-plus rally in Hyde Park on February 15 2003. Right up to the end
Tony was supporting and speaking at peace events.
An imaginative thinker, he founded the Coalition of Resistance as a
way of uniting people in opposition to the austerity programme being
promoted by George Osborne and David Cameron whose method of
restructuring society remains to increase inequality and to concentrate
wealth in the hands of the minority.
I have so many personal memories of Tony. I first met him in the late
1960s as a young activist and it's been a privilege and honour to work
with him on so many causes for so long.
My memories include little vignettes of life such as, at a moment of
enormous tension in Brighton as Tony was about to lose the deputy
leadership of the Labour Party election, he was frustrated that he
couldn't get a cup of tea because the kettle wouldn't work. I suggested
that this should not have been a problem for him as a former technology
minster, at which he smiled.
Later, when my eldest son Ben was just a few months old, I brought
him into Parliament, and he sat on Fenner Brockway's knee in the
parliamentary cafeteria while Tony fed him and talked to him, both of
them oblivious to what was going on around them as they concentrated on
each other.
Tony had a great sense of history and wanted Parliament to
commemorate those who had made a difference, including Emily Wilding
Davison and her census-night sojourn in the broom cupboard under
Westminster Hall.
I had the pleasure of helping Tony put the plaque up late one evening after the house had finished its business for the day.
We went to Tony's car and collected the plaque and an electric drill
and as we made our way via the crypt a policeman approached us.
I thought the game was up and we'd be asked about the drill and electric tool box, late at night.
While I was trying to dream up the appropriate explanation to offer,
the policeman approached and simply offered to carry our bags for us.
Tony told him that we were on our way to the chapel, at which point
the policeman offered to escort us but Tony insisted on privacy.
On another occasion we went to Belfast to observe a "supergrass"
trial, where the juries did not exist and the judge made a decision on
the basis of evidence given from an informer who in return was given
anonymity, a change of identity and a very large sum of money to start a
new life.
When we arrived we went and queued up with other families to go into
the public gallery and the court master saw us and said he'd find a
space for us in the well of the court.
Rather undiplomatically he explained that in the public gallery one
couldn't see or hear anything because the glass screen was scratched and
there was a very poor PA system.
When we reached the well of the court, to the chagrin of our host,
there were no seats available until the empty 12 seats in the jury box
were spotted and we duly sat in them.
The barrister for the defence spotted an opportunity and announced to
the judge that he was surprised at how small the new jury was but that
he was happy to accept its wisdom.
Tony leaves behind the books and wonderful diaries he wrote and the
enormous admiration and the friendship of millions of people.
He died with his family around him and while it is desperately sad
for all of the family, his children Hilary, Stephen Melissa and Josh, he
also leaves behind a wider family who he loved and adored.
At a Stop the War conference in the Emmanuelle Centre late last year,
he was treated with overwhelming warmth and reverence by the
international gathering.
He realised his legacy is a belief in people, progress and our
abilities to shape our own lives, not leave it to the powerful and the
wealthy.
Thanks, Tony, for everything that you did and the path that your
writings will continue to show about how to bring about change. It was
been one of the great privileges of my life to have known you so well
and worked with you on so many causes.
Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North
