BRITAIN has lost two rare dinosaurs in just one week.
Rail union militant Bob Crow died on Tuesday, aged 52. His mentor, Tony Benn,
expired after a long illness yesterday at 88.
Both men fought to their last breath for the Socialist Revolution, long after
the Red Flag had been lowered to half-mast.
In his dotage, Tony Benn became a twinkly-eyed sage who beguiled audiences who
either did not know about his rabble-rousing past or did not care.
“I am a national treasure,” he once said wistfully. “That’s because I’m
harmless now.”
It wasn’t always so. As a gifted young politician, the former Viscount
Stansgate, aka Anthony Wedgwood Benn, was perhaps the most dangerous and
divisive figure in British politics.
“He immatures with age,” moaned exasperated Labour PM Harold Wilson as Benn
lurched further and further to the left.
The effective leader of the subversive “Militant Tendency” in the late
Seventies, Tony Benn came close to giving the hard Left perpetual power by
changing the Labour rule book.
Bennites packed the boring but influential committees who picked the
candidates for powerful jobs. Then they slowly edged out everyone in their
way.
By the early Eighties, the militant Left was on the rampage, backed by
ban-the-bomb extremists, fanatical feminists and strike-happy wreckers like
NUM president Arthur Scargill.
These are the now-forgotten days when Britain was ravaged by wildcat strikes
and derided as the “Sick Man of Europe”.
Unions fought for, and seemed for a while to win control over, the “commanding
heights” of the economy — the mining, shipping, steel and power industries.
In 1981, Benn came within a whisker of power, losing the election as deputy to
bewildered Michael Foot by a single percentage point. The same year, the
Labour Party split asunder as ex-Cabinet ministers Roy Jenkins, David Owen
and Shirley Williams stormed out to form the breakaway SDP.
For some, the tragedy was too few fellow moderates joined them, with Labour
kept out of power for the next 16 years by Benn’s nemesis, Margaret
Thatcher.
His critics never forgave him. One told me yesterday: “He was a bad man, a
fraud who used democracy as a weapon to destroy democracy itself.”
But his fans — including Cherie Blair — didn’t care. A photo shows her gazing
adoringly at the man she described as “my favourite Tony” — even though she
was just married to Tony Blair and her father was actor Tony Booth.
Milestones of left-wing heavyweight
1925: Born on April 3 in Marylebone, London.
1947: Elected president of Oxford Union.
1949: Meets fellow student Caroline Middleton DeCamp. She accepts his
marriage proposal nine days later.
1950: Elected MP for Bristol South East.
1960: Inherits title Viscount Stansgate and fights to be allowed to
relinquish title and return to House of Commons.
1964: Becomes Postmaster General in Harold Wilson’s government.
Plans closure of pirate radio stations and introduces Girobank.
1966: Becomes minister of technology and helped to develop the
Anglo-French Concorde passenger aircraft.
1980: Says he wants to see Labour nationalise industries, control
capital and implement industrial democracy “within weeks” of taking power. A
party split ensues.
1981: Defeated in Labour deputy-leadership race by Denis Healey.
1984: During the miners’ strike he is a strong supporter of NUM leader
Arthur Scargill.
1988: Loses leadership bid to Neil Kinnock.
2000: Wife Caroline dies of breast cancer.
2001: Retired after almost 50 years as an MP “to spend more time on
politics”. Became vociferous anti-nuclear, anti-war campaigner.
2002: Opens Glastonbury Festival’s Left Field, returning to speak every
year, including 2013.
2014: Dies at home, surrounded by family.