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Jan
Goodey finds if there's life after Parliament for
one of the Left's leading lights
 Lauded
on the left, pilloried on the right, ignored by the centre
and slammed by the anti-capitalists - safe to say everyone's
got an opinion on Tony Benn. But is he the slightly eccentric
figure of the lunatic fringe, portrayed in cartoons wide
eyed, with tatty cardigan, and wreathed in pipe smoke?
Or is he the voice of reason, the one-time Parliamentarian
who would keep the whole House hanging on his every word?
Speaking to him, you realise just how much political knowledge
is stored up in those cranial vaults. As you and I may
chat about the weather over a cuppa, Benn will hold forth
on the ills of 21st century in such a succinct and commonsensical
like fashion you're almost looking round for the autocue.
Since
quitting Westminster his oratory skills are still much
in demand, as he explains, "I said I was leaving
Parliament to devote more time to politics, and people
laughed. What I'm actually doing is, I'm engaged in a
huge campaign around the country - Writing on the Wall,
lectures, public meetings - talking to people and listening.
One of the biggest problems is apathy/low turn out and
of course that produces Le Penn in France. So I'm aiming
to give people some understanding of what's happening
and what they might do, spread a bit of hope."
Writing
on the Wall is a nationwide tour of spoken word and music.
Tony Benn and a banjo? Not quite. Benn edited the Writing
on the Wall book, which lists all the major statements
for justice and human rights over the last 400 - 500 years.
He reads these statements out, comments on them and then
Roy Bailey sings songs about related issues, be it the
Peasant's Revolt, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Suffragettes,
or the English Revolution. "I met Roy Bailey in 1976
in Burford," says Benn, "he's a retired professor
with a fantastic voice and he plays the guitar and goes
all over the world to folk concerts. We've done this show
for about ten years and it's always absolutely packed
out. People study geneology; well this is sort of studying
your collective history. You look back and see that what
you think now has been thought by people for hundreds
and hundreds of years. Good fun to do."
Fun?
Fun? Come on, is this the right Tony? You're not supposed
to have fun, you're a died in the wool socialist. We leave
'fun' to the party apparatchiks, the Peter Mandlesons
and John Prescott's jigging away to The Only Way is Up
at election victory parties. And sure enough 'fun' is
consigned to a New Labour sin bin along with all the other
fripperies of spin - and we're back on message. "Against
this historical background you see modern political movements
in their proper context. You see that the so-called anti-globalisation
movement is a movement for world democracy. Just as the
Chartists and the Suffragettes campaigned for the vote,
now people are saying we want some control over our lives,
we don't want the world to be run by big business and
the European Commission and the bankers and the gamblers,
we want some say."
Now
we're getting to the nub. Benn operates best when he tells
it straight. This is what really sticks in the craw of
seasoned politicians, both right and left, who prefer
to skate round issues with all the niceties of sophisticated
argument. And it's the reason he only made it as far as
minister-on-the-sidelines at the height of his political
career under Wilson and Callaghan in the Sixties and Seventies.
Although when I ask if he ever wanted the top job his
answer is as short as it is sweet, "Oh I don't give
the matter a minute's thought."
It's
the question of apathy that is taking up most of his time
at present; apathy in this country, which leads to 20%
or less voting in local elections and one of the lowest
General Election turn-outs for 100 years. "When people
get switched off, pessimistic and totally hopeless it's
the sort of thing that produced Hitler in the 1930s. Germany
had 6 million unemployed, absolutely powerless people,
and Hitler said, 'It's all down to the Jews, I'll give
you all jobs,' and he did, he armed Germany and we lost
50 million lives. We have to tackle real problems. We
had full employment in wartime to kill people, why can't
we have full employment in peacetime? Because nothing
that isn't profitable is ever done. People put profit
before need.
"We
have to deal with people's real problems: a lot of people
are very insecure in work with short-term contracts; if
you're a teacher or a nurse in London it's difficult to
get a house; you know you may have to wait for a hip operation
and yet there's tons of money for war. People are very
anxious and it's understandable."
And
Benn isn't averse to pointing a finger at his own chosen
profession. It's the media and politicians who underestimate
the intelligence of people. According to him, we're all
treated like a lot of kids, whereas people have got relevant
experience and yet they don't think they're being represented
anymore, they feel they're being managed. This is one
of the reasons for cynicism with the entrenched centre-left/right
political dynasties in Europe and the subsequent flirtation
with the extreme right, when these dynasties, which fail
to engage, invariably fall."
Benn
is keen to point to the unelected nature of European governance,
as well. "The problem in Europe is you don't elect
the people who govern you. Europe is governed by commissioners
who are not elected and bankers who are not elected. I
was on the council of ministers and it's an absolute bureaucratic
nightmare. If you can't change policy by changing the
government why bother to vote? That is the real danger.
The struggle for democracy has always been very unpopular
whoever's in power - nobody at the top level wants to
share their power with anyone else."
His
views on America are similarly scathing, and in typical
Benn fashion, summed up in bite sized globbets which can
bring down any argument you'd care to raise in opposition.
This is Benn after all, the man who gets the biggest round
of applause on Question Time, the one who makes the other
panelists squirm in their seats. He continues, "America
is the biggest empire the world has ever known and it's
growing. It's got bases in 141 countries, it's bombed
19 countries since the war, it's got overwhelming military
power, it's identified 60 countries where it will feel
free to bomb if it so chooses."
"The
Afghan thing has gone wrong in a really big way. We said
we'd go in and sort it out and the whole thing is totally
awry. Anyway most wars are about oil, I mean take the
Falklands War: there's more oil round the Falklands than
round the UK. The Gulf War was about oil, the Kosovo war
as well, so when you look at it that way, you see it's
perhaps not so much a war against terrorism as a war for
the empire to get the oil it needs to keep its cars running.
Five hundred millionnaires have got the same income as
half the population put together. You can't have peace
in the world with that degree of gap between rich and
poor."
Not
that it's all doom and gloom, "There's some marvellous
people in America campaigning away but they never get
reported over here," he adds. "The Trade Union
movement has raised $17m for healthcare by increasing
contributions. The Green candidate for the governor of
New York has come out against GM food and for public provision
for children. You mustn't assume every American is for
Bush. He only just scraped in by a fiddle in Florida.
He doesn't represent the majority of the people in America."
When
I ask who are the people who inspired him in this country,
bearing in mind his own influence on a generation of politicians/activists,
his response is suitably modest. "I look back on
my childhood and the people I remember are the people
who encouraged me, an old man of 80 who will pat you on
the back and say 'Tony, you're doing alright, keep at
it, or try it this way', or my parents, my wife and my
family."
Benn was born into privilege, the son of Lord Stansgate,
co-owner of the Benn Brothers publishing firm. He went
to Westminster school and New College, Oxford where he
became president of the union, and met his wife Caroline,
his closest companion, who died in 1999. It would appear
that wrench has been partly assuaged by seeing more of
his four children, ten grandchildren, and work of course.
"I haven't got a secretary. I thought when I left
Parliament no-one would write to me and the letters pour
in and I sit at home and scribble postcards to people.
I work very, very, very hard. Occasionally I'll go to
the movies, and I do enjoy it when my grandchildren come
and see me."
Does
he pass on any advice to son and MP Hilary Benn? "He's
had a lot of experience, worked as the head of a trade
union research department, he was a local councillor,
worked for David Blunkett as a advisor. He's a brilliant
lad, just been moved to a new job at the Home Office,
very proud of him."
With Benn senior's next volume of diaries coming out in
the autumn (entitled Free at Last), a visiting professorship
at the LSE planned, and a book of those lectures due out
next year, there's no letting up, even with a 78th birthday
beckoning: "I keep my diary every night, just keep
the machine going. To me politics is so interesting, having
ten grandchildren - politics is what happens to them.
I can't see politics as something that happens in a little
box, Monday to Friday in the House of Commons. Everything
that happens is of interest. I'm an extremely lucky man."
Tony
Benn and Roy Bailey appear in Writing on the Wall at the
Dome Concert Hall, Sat July 6, 8pm, tickets 01273 709709.
copyright New Insight 2002
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