Tony Benn RIP

international | miscellaneous | news report

Friday March 14, 2014 10:54

by v for vendetta

Sadly, Tony Benn has died aged 88
"After the war people said, 'If you can plan for war, why can't you plan for peace?' When I was 17, I had a letter from the government saying, 'Dear Mr. Benn, will you turn up when you're 17 1/2? We'll give you free food, free clothes, free training, free accommodation, and two shillings, ten pence a day to just kill Germans.' People said, well, if you can have full employment to kill people, why in God's name couldn't you have full employment and good schools, good hospitals, good houses?"
-Tony Benn (1925-2014):

Wiki has this to say about him:

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party politician who was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 50 years and a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.

Benn's campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963. In the Labour Government of 1964–1970 he served first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as a notably "technocratic" Minister of Technology. In the period when the Labour Party was in Opposition, for a year he was the Chairman of the Labour Party. In the Labour Government of 1974–1979 he returned to the Cabinet, initially as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy, retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister. During the Labour Party's time in Opposition during the 1980s, he was seen as the party's prominent figure on the left, and the term "Bennite" has come to be used in Britain for someone of a more radical left-wing position.

Benn topped several polls as the most popular politician in Britain. He has been described as "one of the few UK politicians to have become more left-wing after holding ministerial office." After leaving Parliament, Benn became involved in the grass-roots politics of demonstrations and meetings, and was the President of the Stop the War Coalition for the last decade. He was a vegetarian from the 1970s until his death.

BBC has a history here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/tony_benn

Guardian has a good article too:
http://www.theguardian.com/profile/tonybenn

RIP Tony Benn

The end of an era where rounded whole people with a genuine moral compass and genuine convictions still existed.

With few exceptions, nothing but a bunch of self serving narcissistic empty shells left to rule politics.

I see little hope for the future.