Tony Benn

[Stranger Than Paradise]

I seem to remember someone saying a while back that Tony Benn had sent police to put down a strike. Has anyone got a link to an article which says this?

[Искра]

Who's Tony Benn? :confused:

[Devrim]

Who's Tony Benn? :confused:

He is an old English Labour left politician.


I seem to remember someone saying a while back that Tony Benn had sent police to put down a strike. Has anyone got a link to an article which says this?


Sometimes the opposition of civil servants borders on outright sabotage. Thus Brian Sedgemore, in his recent book The Secret Constitution (1980), points out that when Tony Benn was Minister of Energy during a strike at Windscale, his civil servants informed him that unless troops were used to move nitrogen across a picket line a "critical nuclear explosion would take place". Sedgemore diplomatically comments that these warnings were "unfounded". The Civil Contingencies Unit at the Cabinet Office had prepared a plan "to break the strike with troops, thus leaving Tony Benn as a sort of latter-day Churchill"

Devrim

[Stranger Than Paradise]

To be uncontroversial, I shall direct you towards Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Benn

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Tony Benn, if not a revolutionary, is a fine socialist.

[Holden Caulfield]

Tony Benn, if not a revolutionary, is a fine socialist.

We all like Tony Benn but the man, and anybody who thinks he is a socialist, is senile.
I went to see him talk and was very disappointed, it was alot of liberal nonesense and I was in the RAF you know.

He is typical late 2nd International in his views, and held in too high regard by the left

[zubovskyblvd]

I think Benn is rightly very popular on the Left in Britain, even his continuing commitment to Labour doesn't taint him; it's interesting to note that when first elected as an MP and in his early days in government he was fairly centrist, but moved leftwards from the early 1970s onwards eventually becoming 'the most dangerous man in Britain' by the 1980s when Bennism became very popular in the Labour Party. Used to see him speak at anti-war demos a couple of years ago, a very eloquent man.

[Demogorgon]

It should be pointed out that Benn claims that his time in Cabinet convinced him that the elected Government was at the mercy of corporate power and could not decide on its own actions. This seems to indicate he cannot necessarily be held to account for everything carried out by any department he headed.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I think we have to accept that he is not, and has never been a revolutionary.

To his credit though, he has not become one of these Labour politicians who has become at one with Capitalism over time.

He is certainly to the left of Labour. I imagine it was personal choice to be involved in Bourgeois political institutions.

He is no Fidel, he is no revolutionary, but he is a good man and certainly a socialist. I wouldn't hero worship him, but I respect him immensely. As it happens, I was quite imrpessed when I heard him speak for a good hour about the merits of Socialism.

[Holden Caulfield]

When I herd him speak he seemed to not grasp the link between politics and economics, perhaps he was just having a bad day...

Still I call him Phoney Benn ;)

[RedAnarchist]

I don't see why this is in Learning, so I'll move it to Politics.

[Pogue]

He was like a hero of mine when I was younger and finding my way into class struggle politics, but politically he is too 'old england', his politics are watered down social democracy, he was radical for a british parliament and his speech on thatcherism and market forces in the house is worth a listen, politically he's shite, and supressing a strike, ya know

[Die Neue Zeit]

We all like Tony Benn but the man, and anybody who thinks he is a socialist, is senile.
I went to see him talk and was very disappointed, it was alot of liberal nonesense and I was in the RAF you know.

He is typical late 2nd International in his views, and held in too high regard by the left

If he were "late 2nd International in his views," he would have considered massive constitutional overhaul for political rights (like the right to bear arms and form militias) and so on, not just socialist economic policies. Unfortunately, he is part of the most left-reformist variant of left economism.