The trial of Anthony Wedgwood Benn (information required)

Sounds like an interesting project best of luck with it!

Great idea!

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 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.

Benn's parliamentary record as pro-nuclear Minister for Technology in the 1960s is quite interesting;

Considers disposing of nuclear waste at sea;

TECHNOLOGY
Radioactive Waste (Disposal at Sea)
HC Deb 09 March 1967 vol 742 c348W
348W

§
Mr. Judd

asked the Minister of Technology whether he will make a statement with special reference to public safety and health on the plans of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to use a south coast port as a disposal centre for European and British atomic waste.

§
Mr. Benn

The European Nuclear Energy Agency is studying a possible experimental disposal at sea of certain radio-active waste from several countries; the Atomic Energy Authority is considering how the U.K. contribution might be delivered to the ship. All the necessary precautions will be taken. There are no plans for centralising the disposal of European waste in the U.K.

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1967/mar/09/radioactive-waste-disposal-at-sea#S5CV0742P0_19670309_CWA_165

Plans for extension of UK nuclear power;

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1967/apr/25/uranium#S5CV0745P0_19670425_CWA_235

HANSARD 25 April 1967 → Written Answers (Commons) → TECHNOLOGY
Uranium
HC Deb 25 April 1967 vol 745 c266W
266W

§
Mr. McGuire

asked the Minister of Technology what view his Department have formed about supply and price prospects for natural uranium which will be needed to support the increased use of nuclear power in this country; and if he will make a statement.

§
Mr. Benn

The Atomic Energy Authority's forward contracts assure sufficient supplies to meet the basic requirements of the nuclear power programme well into the 1970s. The outlook beyond that seems promising.

Proposes to increase 'flexibility of labour', reduce overtime and increase productivity of energy workers;

Atomic Energy Authority (Wage Increases)
HC Deb 05 May 1967 vol 746 c125W
125W

§
Mr. Biffen

asked the Minister of Technology if the recent wage increase offered by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to manual workers represents the maximum incomes increase that would be consistent with the criteria for the Government's prices and incomes policy.

§
Mr. Benn

No wage increases as such have been offered by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to its industrial employees. As part of a proposed productivity agreement, the Authority offered to pay productivity supplements to the employees in return for specified changes in working practices, other measures to improve the flexibility of the labour force and to secure progressive reductions in regular overtime working. I understand that the Authority's offer is still open. The proposed agreement as a whole accords with the Government's prices and incomes policy.

Claims that "The disposal of radioactive effluent from fast breeder reactors presents no problems...";

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1967/nov/14/fast-breeder-reactors-radioactive#S5CV0754P0_19671114_CWA_40

HANSARD 14 November 1967 → Written Answers (Commons) → TECHNOLOGY
Fast Breeder Reactors (Radioactive Effluent)
HC Deb 14 November 1967 vol 754 c63W
63W

§
Mr. Brooks

asked the Minister of Technology whether, in the light of the difficulties in disposing of the radioactive effluent from fast breeder reactors, he will now reconsider his decision to reduce research expenditure at Culham on fusion reactors.

§
Mr. Benn

No. The disposal of radioactive effluent from fast breeder reactors presents no problems of a kind different from those already encountered and solved successfully in the operation of existing power reactors.

Advocates high wages for bosses;

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1969/apr/16/atomic-energy-authority-chairmans-salary#S5CV0781P0_19690416_HOC_109
HANSARD 16 April 1969 → Commons Sitting → TECHNOLOGY
Atomic Energy Authority (Chairman's Salary)
HC Deb 16 April 1969 vol 781 cc1138-9
1138

§
19. Mr. Lubbock

asked the Minister of Technology what proposals he has to make for adjusting the salary of the Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, in the light of paragraph 101 of Command Paper No. 3970.

§
Mr. Benn

None as yet. But I am in touch with the Chairman about his salary, and I expect to reach a decision shortly.

§
Mr. Lubbock

Does the Minister accept that the arguments advanced by the First Secretary, in relation to the chairmen of the nationalised industries, about the detrimental effect on the quality of management in the long run which could be caused by having salaries at too low a level in these industries, could equally apply to the Atomic Energy Authority? Will he take urgent steps to see that the Chairman's salary is revised to a more realistic level?

§
Mr. Benn

I fully accept what the hon. Gentleman says. The Government and the First Secretary accept that there is a read across from the posts on which the National Board for Prices and Incomes reported and similar posts. The Atomic Energy Authority in the course of the years has spent about £500 million on civil research. A great deal of our future is locked up in its management skill, and this must be properly reflected.

§
Sir H. Legge-Bourke

When the right hon. Gentleman talks to the Chairman, will he bear in mind, particularly in the light of the Third Report of the Select Committee on the nuclear power programme, and his own thinking on this matter, that it has become abundantly clear that the A.E.A. will have to be far more market-orientated than ever before? Will he bear in mind the need to relate the Chairman's salary to those paid to people who are conducting complicated and equally sophisticated marketing exercises?

§
Mr. Benn

I accept that entirely, and we are very lucky in having in the present Chairman a man who through his work on the fuel side has won the respect of the industry for the way in which he has approached his task. With the centrifuge work and the new organisation that is coming, the point made by the hon. Gentleman has acquired special relevance, and I accept this.

As Minister for Energy Benn in 1976 brought in legislation to arm the Atomic Energy Authority constabulary;

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1976-02-26a.701.0#g708.1

I turn to the method recommended in the Bill. It is proposed that we should arm the Atomic Energy Authority constabulary. It has been a police force since 1955. Since 1971, when British Nuclear Fuels Limited became a separate organisation, the coverage that the Atomic Energy Authority constabulary has provided has extended to BNFL. Indeed, until recently the constabulary was unarmed.

[...]

When I say that the AEA constabulary will be put in the same position as the regular police and the Ministry of Defence constabulary, I mean that under the Bill it will have the right to possess firearms without specific authority under the Firearms Act 1968. ...

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 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 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

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.

No I'm not.

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.

Bob Crow and Tony Benn, some of us aren’t in mourning…

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 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 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 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 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.