I am currently writing a polemical book about Tony Benn - (The Trial of Anthony Wedgwood Benn)
I am looking to hear from anyone who has any opinions, stories, thoughts, feelings, or experiences of events etc., that involve Tony Benn…
Should you have any information please get in touch with me via:
Facebook – Palatino Linotype
Twitter - @PLinotype
Email – [email protected]
Or you can message via Libcom
If you have anything nice to say about Tony Benn then I have no interest I hearing from you…..
Once the book is finished it will be available in hard copy & also via Libcom in various ebook formats
Comments
Sounds like an interesting
Sounds like an interesting project best of luck with it!
Great idea!
Great idea!
I haven't seen the Tony Benn:
I haven't seen the Tony Benn: Will & Testamen film yet. I will watch it just so I can really irritated. Anyone seen it yet?
http://tonybennfilm.com/
Here's some information; In
Here's some information;
In the early/mid eighties just about every right on, liberal lefty, Nelson Mandella freeing, red star wearing, middle class pretending to be working class, raincoated tosspiece had a stonking great hard on for Comrade Fucking Benn. I think that's enough evidence to condemn him to the gulag of time. Chances are that if you threw a brick at a crowd of Benn worshipers at the time it would bounce off of a couple of Jeremys and a Phinella before finally giving Tarquin a well deserved contusion.
Please note; The above is absolutely true and no prejudice whatsoever is affecting my recollection of events.
Thanks Webby!!! I will be
Thanks Webby!!! I will be using that quote in its entirety.... :)
Benn's parliamentary record
Benn's parliamentary record as pro-nuclear Minister for Technology in the 1960s is quite interesting;
Considers disposing of nuclear waste at sea;
Plans for extension of UK nuclear power;
Proposes to increase 'flexibility of labour', reduce overtime and increase productivity of energy workers;
Claims that "The disposal of radioactive effluent from fast breeder reactors presents no problems...";
Advocates high wages for bosses;
As Minister for Energy Benn in 1976 brought in legislation to arm the Atomic Energy Authority constabulary;
Attack your enemies, not your
Attack your enemies, not your shit friends. Tony Benn was no good in our eyes - so what? No politicians are any good. Rubbishing someone who may have been a phoney on lots of levels, and a genuine well intentioned person on many other levels sometimes says more about the accuser than the accused. There has to be at some point when we rubbish those closest to us - and please let it be now - a sense of proportion and propriety. Yes Tony Benn was in many ways the epitome of someone who would get his chauffeur to drive the estates dumper truck over any independent working class initiative. He probably closed more coal mines than Thatcher - possibly a cardinal sin (unless you have to work there)...
Tony Benn, Che Guavara, Karl Marx, Ren, Stimpy and all the other cats that may be close to our politics - we habitually rubbish them as the worse types. And this is the 'worse types' in the face of some enthusiastically and violently exclusive twats.
If we are to ever seriously make any inroads to people who share the closest politics to ours, we need to be able to critique without writing off, without rubbishing and without those people wondering why those who are closer their own politics do the nastiest job on them as though they are trash.
How the fuck are people like
How the fuck are people like tony benn not our enemies? just because leftists have fantasies about them doesn't mean they are close to our politics, your making exactly the same sort of arguments as Stalinist do about Stalin and the USSR.
radicalgraffiti By
radicalgraffiti
By implication are you saying Benn and Stalin are similar? The lumping of everyone on the left as ‘our enemies’ infers anarchists/communists are not part of the workers movement. Or is this rewriting history to exclude the ‘left’ from the workers movement?
I have sometimes found in certain non-communist anarchists (and the SPGB) a patronizing attitude to ‘the left’. The left wing of capitalism I hear the cry. And a similar caricature comes in contemptuous reply – the anarchists the bad boys of the petty bourgeois (at least until they graduate and join daddy’s firm). This is all bollocks of course, just a lazy substitute for real politics.
radicalgraffiti wrote: How
radicalgraffiti
No I'm not.
Hi plasmatelly, I'm genuinely
Hi plasmatelly, I'm genuinely surprised at you earlier post.
Tony Benn, Che Guavara?
Che Guavara! You've got to be joking.
Do you actually think that these figures were close to the politics of the anarchist communists?
Maybe I'm misreading your post and getting it all in a muddle when you write:
"Tony Benn, Che Guavara, Karl Marx, Ren, Stimpy and all the other cats that may be close to our politics"
Out of that list, apart from Benn, I'd really like to know why you think Che Guavara is close to our politics. Whose politics? Certainly not revolutionary anarchists?
Anyway, I've had a search on Libcom for an article that Anarchist Federation Manchester published a while back called Why We Are Not on the Left. I couldn't find a version on Libcom so I'll upload it in the future.
http://manchesteraf.org/2014/04/03/why-we-are-not-on-the-left/
Anarchists are close to the politics of Left-wing leaders like workers are close to managers.
I feel embarrassed now. I've
I feel embarrassed now. I've realised plasmatelly's post is all ironic mockery. I should have been a bit more attuned to the sarcasm.
Yeah, gotta admit it is a bit
Yeah, gotta admit it is a bit confusing, but that's Friday nights for you. Ok, I'll try and clarify. I really find that putting any sort of effort into rubbishing characters on the left is not just a waste of time, it actually backfires on us. We reject the Stalinism of Che Guavara and the state socialism of Tony Benn, but so what? How do come off better by trashing left-wing heroes, and who are we actually trying to preach to? Those who find Benn a hero tend to be pensioners - those who find Che a hero are either kids or Stalinists. It's a waste of time IMO; the poorest argument for anarchist politics is to trash those that surround on the left. People need to wise up a bit on this issue - we won't have anarchist converts by arguing that everything else is shit. I don't know how many times down the years I've heard those on the left accuse us of just offering criticism - and to a certain degree they're right. Also - there's plenty critical stuff written about all these goons already.
There is a talk here from a
There is a talk here from a libertarian socialist perspective and critical about Tony Benn
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/audio/why-tony-benn-should-be-socialist
Call him by his correct
Call him by his correct title, the late Viscount Stansgate. On Benn lefties often go on about how giving up his peerage was a sign of class solidarity or some shit but:
"William Wedgwood Benn, a prominent Liberal and later Labour politician in the first half of the 20th century, was created Viscount Stansgate in 1942. Tony Benn’s elder brother Michael would have succeeded to the title, but he was killed in the second world war. When the younger Benn succeeded in 1960, he was already MP for Bristol South East and had to fight for more than two years to renounce his peerage and keep his Commons seat."
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/shortcuts/2014/nov/12/stephen-benn-tony-son-reclaimed-hereditary-peerage
One of the small ( I know how small) victories of past trouble was that only COMMONERS can sit in the house of commons, this parasite even wanted to overturn this meagre democratic gain. Scum.
There are far better sources than the one above for this story but it was first page on google and I couldn't be bothered to look for anything else. Funny thing is the article is about his eldest son pushing to claim back the hereditary title.
Ta
Ta