Tony Benn: The Left’s Flawed Figurehead

The sad death of Tony Benn has prompted comments and reflections from across the political spectrum. JONATHAN TIMBERS argues that while he was an inspiration to many, he became a disastrous leader of the British left whose naive optimism and socialist nostalgia contributed to its decline.

tony bennI am saddened by news of the death of Tony Benn. He played a significant role in the Labour Party from the 1950s to the 1980s and was an inspiration to many. Indeed, he continued to inspire people until his death.

He introduced first-day covers (thus reducing the size of the monarch’s head on our stamps) and had ministerial responsibility for the development of Concorde, arguably the most beautiful aircraft that ever has ever flown. He also had a hand in setting up the computer giant, ICL, and the Trustee Savings Bank, before it was corrupted by finance capital and neo-liberal hubris.

Benn, in his pomp, argued for democratic socialism and parliamentary sovereignty. At his best, as Minister for Industry, he made the UK a laboratory for workers’ control and co-operative enterprise.

During his long decline towards ‘national treasure’ status, he continued to do what no other public figure in the Labour Party could – he turned people, particularly young people, onto politics. He also, of course, published a very interesting diary, recounting his many years at the top table, and then beneath it.

Naive faith

But Benn failed politically because he was a disastrous leader of the left during perhaps its most difficult and uncertain period.

First, after the 1983 general election, with only 29% of the vote, Benn claimed that the result was a victory for socialism, largely because he supported Labour’s hotch-potch of a manifesto. At that moment, he lost many of his naive supporters in the Labour Party, who had been carried away by his faith that socialism was popular. They had all failed to acknowledge the influence of the conservative culture in which people grew up, that made the electorate naturally sceptical of radical democratic ideas.

Indeed, he failed to understand that Labour itself had reinforced that conservative culture through its own bureaucratic practices and timid policies. The rhetoric that made him loved, lost him his credibility, because he lacked analysis and foresight.

Secondly, he failed to recognise that socialism itself was going through a period of crisis. Its big idea, the planned economy, seemed better suited to rationing and authoritarianism than to democracy and sharing plenty. The collapse of the Soviet Union only underlined this, as has the direction of other ‘socialist’ countries like Cuba and, sadly now, Venezuela.

It was a dreadful time to be the figurehead of the left. And Benn was not equipped to lead it through the challenges that lay ahead. Instead, from his 1984 anthology Writing on the Wall onwards, he turned to nostalgia, to the past, helping to complete the transformation of British socialism from the hope of the future, to something like the Sealed Knot Society.

It is always sad when a good person dies and Tony Benn was good, for all his limitations.

His lasting legacy for the Left is what he achieved in government from 1964-70 and 1974-76. During these years, he demonstrated in practice how the state can promote enterprise and support independent worker self-management.

Forget the national treasure; remember the radical democrat who helped make Concorde fly.

6 Comments

  1. Robert Brown
    14 November 2018

    Having been born in the 60s, grown up in Tony Benn’s constituency, watched the things he did and heard things he said, and having read his fabulous diaries, it was always clear Tony Benn had the interests of the 99% at heart. He flagged up all forms of inequality, he fought successfully to give up his inherited position of privilege in the Lords so he could represent ordinary people, the masses, in the Commons and he promoted republicanism.

    Trying to put him down after his death simply reads to me as shallow propaganda – I’d rather base my beliefs on my lifetime’s worth of perceiving the man than a few toxic words attempting to poor scorn on him. I recommend reading his diaries and ignore those who try to represent who he was and what he did.

  2. Graham Wildridge
    20 March 2014

    Jonathan,

    I did smile broadly when you quoted from “A Very British Coup”. The book was written by Chris Mullin, an old “friend” of the ILP. Chris was regarded for a time (let’s say 1978 – 1984) as a (if not the) leading Bennite.

    I think my main point was made in one sentence in my first post: “I think you may have been too critical in your assessment.”

    I have said enough about Benn.

    But let’s find another subject under which to debate your contention that “there are lessons to be learnt from some of the policies pursued in the 60s and 70s that could offer some ideas to us now about how to realise both a more robust economy and a more just society”.

  3. Graham Wildridge
    20 March 2014

    Jonathan,

    I did smile broadly at your quotation from “A Very British Coup”. The book was written by Chris Mullin, an old “friend” of the ILP. I think it is fair to say that for a time (let’s say 1978-1984) Chris was regarded as a (if not the) leading Bennite.

    The point that I made in my first post was simply: “I think you may have been too critical in your assessment.”

    I think that I have said enough about Benn.

    But let’s find another subject in which to debate your view that “there are lessons to be learnt from some of the policies pursued in the 60s and 70s that could offer some ideas to us now about how to realise both a more robust economy and a more just society”.

  4. Jonathan Timbers
    19 March 2014

    Dear Graham,

    Forgive me, you make several criticisms but I don’t intend to answer them all.

    However, with regard to the ILP’s celebration of its history, I do think there is a substantial difference from our approach and Benn’s in ‘Writing on the Wall’. As an ILP-er, I do not claim or want to have the same politics now as Keir Hardie, Fred Jowett or Margaret Bondfield had in 1893 or 1914. A century and a bit later, I’ve moved on. But I think there are lessons from their lives and the way their politics evolved. As Harry Perkins said in ‘A Very British Coup’, “the dead ask the best questions, and we are answerable”.

    What I find difficult to cope with is the way some of the Left avoid facing up to hard questions by fetishizing the past. This is a personal view but it’s like they want to re-run their youth, or perhaps a time when things seemed more clear cut or hopeful than they are now.

    There are lessons to be learnt from some of the policies Benn pursued in the 60s and 70s that could offer some ideas to us now about how to realise both a more robust economy and a more just society. There’s a danger that’s forgotten because we remember Benn post-1976, and more particularly Benn post-1979, rather than when he made, in my opinion, his most important and relevant contributions.

    The Concorde reference wasn’t ironic by the way.

  5. Graham Wildridge
    19 March 2014

    Jonathan,

    I am still rather unhappy with the title, The Left’s Flawed Figurehead, that caused me rapidly to dash off my first response. I don’t want the ILP to rush to distance itself so readily (as your article implies) from Tony Benn, who even when very frail was still touring the country addressing full venues and answering audience questions in support of a socialist perspective – I attended one such event in deepest Tory-blue Dorking, Surrey. The ILP spent the whole of 2013 retelling the stories of Labour and socialist achievers from the ILP’s 120-year history. Surely Benn’s efforts (though never an ILPer – to my knowledge) deserve similar recognition.

    I also didn’t appreciate what for many readers would seem a satirical applause for any role that Benn might have had in “making Concorde fly”. It may be a genuine interest of yours. I do concede that. But I do find people still oddly fuming over TSR-2.

    And I must make a correction: you didn’t mean Trustee Savings Bank; you should have said National Giro Bank. When I joined the Post Office in 1980, the Induction Course spent a whole day on Giro about which the PO was very proud.

    Debate over the politics of the era in which Benn was active has sprung up:-

    Luke Akehurst (Progress Tendency) wrote on LabourList: Praise Benn – but never forget the damage he did to Labour

    Duncan Hall replied on Left Futures: On Luke Akehurst’s charge sheet against Benn

  6. Graham Wildridge
    17 March 2014

    Jonathan,

    A brave piece to write amidst all of the eulogies to “socialist-saint” Tony even from those hypocrites who we know despised his political perspectives.

    However, I think you may have been too critical in your assessment.

    Tony Benn did speak my feelings. But what I didn’t want to be was a follower. I didn’t want to be a Bennite.

    It is unfortunate that political currents always seem to be attached to particular individuals.

    All those years ago, the Gang of Four (Jenkins, Owen, Rodgers, Williams) split – USA-financed –from the Labour Party because they couldn’t get their own way. The result was successive Tory election victories.

    The Foot-Kinnock-Hattersley team “restored” the Labour Party and rolled out the carpet to Blair-Brown.

    I can point to articles in Labour Leader from the time that identified the Welsh-windbag as being a suspect leader, not only in the way in which he acquired the position (does anyone now remember Clive Jenkins?) but also because of his lack of principles – an anti-EU campaigner later became an EU Commissioner.

    The failure of Bennism was not to have dealt with in political debate that group of charlatans.

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