A sideways look: Tony Benn

The death of Tony Benn gives us a chance to reflect on a controversial hero of the left who grew more radical as he got older. In British political terms he certainly was a figure of some stature, and many people had good things to say about his personal qualities.

Benn’s politics were democratic socialist, with a big chunk of Christianity, but the emphasis was very much on the democracy. Benn passionately advocated democracy, especially the Parliamentary kind. He famously renounced a hereditary peerage so he could remain an MP. This meant he often found strange bedfellows – many of his admirers were surprised at his warm words for Enoch Powell, but both were committed Parliamentarians. His record in government was patchy and he is most remembered for being the leader of the Labour left after the 1979 election defeat. Benn was the standard bearer for a sort of left reformism within Labour, which accounts for the bitterness of the Labour right on his death: they blamed Benn for Labour’s defeats at the time. Labour tore itself apart in the early 1980s against the background of the Thatcherite offensive against the working class. Benn lost the 1981 election for Deputy Leader of the Party. He was vilified by the media for his platform of nationalisation and leaving the EU. Some anarchists might even thank him for the damage done to Labour in this period, though as the heritage of it was Blair and the total marginalisation of any sort of socialism, I don’t think it’s a victory.

While the media’s depiction of Benn was unfair, it’s not like his policies were realistic. He claimed his experiences as a cabinet minister led him to see the power of the state to curtail progressive policies through the resistance of the civil service and the overwhelming power of bankers and industrialists and the media. This analysis led him to formulate his five questions, which are a useful starting point when you meet someone with power: “what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you?” Benn’s point was that if the last couldn’t be answered, the system wasn’t a democracy. But the real point here is that you can’t use the state to curtail the state. Benn never developed a serious critique of the state, though he did resign from Parliament in 2001 to “spend more time on politics”. He wasn’t naïve enough to believe that all political action happened through official channels, but he did see these channels – Parliament, elections, government – as trumping anything else and being needed to validate other changes.

His real anachronism wasn’t his socialism, but his emphasis on methods that by the end even he must have suspected don’t work. He was resolutely against the Iraq War and spoke at many rallies in his role as President of the Stop the War Coalition. There was clearly a majority of the public mood against the war – but it happened anyway. By 2002 as it was getting closer, Benn did call for non-violent direct action against the war, but the SWP-dominated hierarchy of the Stop the War Coalition succeeded in keeping people marching rather than taking action.

I think the other thing about Benn which is worth commemorating is his ability to engage with people in a civil manner. Benn’s Christian socialism was of the “have a chat over a nice cup of tea” variety, rather than the hellfire and damnation certainty that is reflected in the uncivil left.