Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn - Political Legend

 

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn

P  O  L  I  T  I  C  A  L    L  E  G  E  N  D

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2 of his most honest heartfelt address to Parliament are detailed below and video links attached
going against the grain to try keep the uninformed ... informed 

What a shame your son is not cut from the same cloth !!

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Speech to Parliament Mon Nov 23rd 1992

Tony Benn - Arms Sales To Iraq

 

approx transcript below

  

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=1992-11-23a.674.1

Monday 23rd November 1990

Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield):

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I recall the words that were used and shall return to the matter.
I noticed that the President of the Board of Trade was shielding himself behind three lawyers. He said that he had to sign the certificate of public immunity because the Attorney-General told him to do so. He said that he knew that it would have no effect because the judge would have to decide and that, in any case, the whole matter would be decided by Lord Justice Scott.
This is an evasion of ministerial responsibility on a matter of public policy. We have discussed the conduct of Ministers so much that we have forgotten that the story is part of an unhappy record of British relations in the middle east, which my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) will raise again on Friday. Iraq was part of the world which we took over when the Ottoman empire disappeared. Britain bombed Iraq with chemical weapons in the 1920s and a few months ago the Queen Mother unveiled a statue to the man who did it—Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, known as Bomber Harris. He was the squadron leader who used chemical weapons against Iraq.
We planned to occupy Kuwait in 1958—it all came out in the official papers—when Selwyn Lloyd wrote to Foster Dulles stating that we might take over Kuwait as a Crown colony. The double standards of British policy in the middle east will be noticed by anyone in the Arab world who reads the report of today's debate. We did not take the same view as we took about Kuwait when Turkey invaded Cyprus or when the occupied territories were taken over by Israel.
Considered in the light of what we now know, the Gulf war is seen to be a war for profit, oil and control of the region. Now we are suddenly told that the Ministers, who so vigorously protested their defence of democracy and human rights, were selling weapons to Sadam Hussein who was represssing Kurds and Shi'ites before and after the war. Those Ministers then said that it was merely a matter of flexible guidelines.
Some 200,000 Iraqis were killed last year by forces including our own. Some 150,000 Iraqi children aged under five were expected to die by the Harvard medical team who studied the bombing of the water supply by British, American and French bombers. It is an act of odious hypocrisy then to say, as hon. Members have said, that our industry needs the orders and people want the jobs. The House may remember the joke about the man producing nuclear weapons in America. Somebody asked him, "How can you do it?" He replied, "A man has got to live." That is the argument being used to justify the supply of weapons.
I am glad that the former leader of the Liberal party the right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Sir D. Steel) mentioned the arms trade, which is what matters for the future. I am grateful to the Committee Against the Arms Trade, of which I have long been a supporter, for providing me with information, some of which has been quoted.
The international arms trade is a greater threat to world peace than the AIDS epidemic or the drugs trade, because it is supported by Governments. It props up dictators such as the Shah, Batista, Marcos, Papa Doc and Pinochet, who received the weapons to crush their own people. They did so in the interests of keeping down their people so that multinationals could make a profit for the super-powers that sold them the weapons. The fact that such people have bought those weapons then leads them into trouble with the International Monetary Fund, which tells them to cut their social budget as they must pay the debt owed on the arms that were bought to keep down their own people.
There is a tremendous waste of skill. Some of the most brilliant scientists and engineers in the world are working on methods of death instead of means of life. Billions of pounds are wasted on weapons, when they could have been used to save life. A heavy responsibility rests on everyone who promotes the international arms trade—I know that all Governments have done so to some extent. There have been 134 wars since 1945, in which millions of people have died and in which the weapons used were often supplied by the super-powers. Millions more people died because they were denied the resources that were wasted in the arms programme. Every arms programme and every arms sale plants the seeds of a new war.
What should the House do about the problem? Ministers will not tell the House the truth about the matter. Everyone knows—it has been mentioned—that Ministers use secret intelligence. Ministers are prepared to sacrifice intelligence agents to conceal the truth. I wonder whether Farzad Bazoft was such a victim, as it is not all certain that he would not have been repudiated, like the man who was recently put on trial.
The House should deal with the issue by Select Committee. Oliver North was sent before a congressional committee and grilled for weeks about Watergate. When Peter Wright wrote a book saying that he had committed treason, millions of pounds were spent by the Government to prevent the book from getting into the hands of the British people.
We are discussing the capitulation of the legislature as it fails even to want to make the Executive accountable and is happy to pass the matter to a judge. We shall all have to wait two years, by which time the people will have forgotten what the inquiry was about and the Ministers responsible will have gone to the House of Lords, and that will be the end of the matter.
We should not pass the matter over to Lord Justice Scott. I have no knowledge of his work and he may be a distinguished man, but the House should take responsibility. The House would do well to get away from trying to find scapegoats. The central questions are: who should be allowed to buy weapons? Who controls them? Who knows what happens? Who tells the truth? Does the House take responsibility for holding the Government accountable or does it shuffle off the responsibility as it has on so many other issues, to a commission, an agency or a High Court judge? If we take the latter course, we shall be burying the House as an historic defender of the rights of those we represent, some of whom were sent to fight in Iraq against an army that we had armed.

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Speech to Parliament Thurs Sept 6th 1990

Tony Benn - The Gulf War (Double Standards) 

approx transcript below

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm198990/cmhansrd/1990-09-06/Debate-4.html

  
Thursday 6 September 1990

Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield) : Many hon. Members have said that this is the gravest crisis that we have faced since 1945, and I share that view. In the light of that, can anyone doubt that it was right to recall the House of Commons so that we could debate the matter outside the television and radio studios and without relying upon the mass media? There has also been a demand--quite properly in a crisis--for a degree of unity, and that unity has been present in a number of important respects. No hon. Member supports the act of aggression by Saddam Hussein against Kuwait. So far as I know, no hon. Member is other than strongly supportive of the sanctions taken by the United Nations against Saddam Hussein and the resolution for their enforcement. We also have something else in common--none of us will be killed if a war breaks out of the Government. This is not the place to deal with it, but under our constitution, military deployments, acts of war and treaties of peace come under the Crown prerogative. Parliament has no legal or constitutional right whatever to decide the matters that are before us for debate.

But we have a duty to represent people. We have a duty to represent--as far as I can make out, some Conservative Members have done it with tremendous energy--British citizens in Iraq and Kuwait. We have a responsibility for them and their families. That has hardly been mentioned except as an instrument for denouncing, quite properly, the man who is detaining them. We have service men and women in the middle east, and perhaps more are to go there if the stories in today's papers are right. They and their families are entitled to have Members of Parliament to represent them. There are the refugees, thousands of them without water and food, and as human beings we have a responsibility to them. I might add that the tragic pictures that we have seen of people in the desert without proper food or shelter would be as nothing to what would happen if war broke out. As you know, Mr. Speaker, because we discussed it yesterday, I intend to oppose the motion tomorrow that the House should now adjourn. The motion to adjourn the House is usually a formal one. The House adjourns at night and meets again at 2.30 pm. But this is the one rare occasion when whether we should adjourn for another six weeks while events take their course is the real question. If anyone says to me, as some have said in the face of the crisis, that we should send a united message to Saddam Hussein, I remind the House that on 5 May 1940, when Hitler was at the gates, there was an Adjournment debate on the handling by the Government of the Campaign in Norway, and a vote. The then Prime Minister won the vote and resigned, and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. So let us not be told that the duty of the House of Commons is to unite behind whatever the Government of the day does, because that is not what the House is there to do. We are here to represent people and to contribute our own opinions as best we can. I have no complaint of any speech made today about how we feel that the crisis should be handled.

I will use plain language. I fear that the United States has already decided that, when it is ready, it will create a pretext for a war. That is what I believe. I acquit the Foreign Secretary of being in that hawkish clan because, in so far as one can penetrate the inscrutable corridors of power and the minds of their inhabitants, he seems to be a bit of a dove. But let me say this, too, without offence. Britain is a minor player in this game. We have had a debate today as though everything hinged on whether the Prime Minister decided to go to war. The Prime Minister, too, is a minor player in this unfolding tragedy. She decided to go in with President Bush, perhaps because of the transatlantic relationship, the so- called "special relationship", or as thanks for the Falklands, or because she did not want to get mixed up with the EEC.

But she is a minor player and once she and the Cabinet decided to commit even a notional number of forces--including the RAF and the RAF regiment and now the troops--she was locked into what President Bush intended to do. It is important that we should not discuss, as if we were in a position to decide the post-cold- war order, what the Prime Minister will be doing here and there. We are a minor partner in an American strategy.

It must be known by now that I am opposed to a war against Iraq. I am opposed to action outside the United Nations. I believe that it would divide the Security Council. It might not exactly unite the Arab world, but it might bring many Arab countries together against us. The outcome of such a war could not be sure, because President Saddam Hussein would certainly have the capacity, were he to choose to do it, to destroy so many oil installations that, even though he himself might be destroyed, it would inflict a burden on the world economy and the middle east which could not be contemplated. 

Mr. Cormack : Nobody in the House is enthusiastic for war, but is the right hon. Gentleman saying that he is prepared to let Saddam Hussein keep his loot?

Mr. Benn : No, I am not saying that at all. I said at the beginning of my speech that there is unanimity for sanctions. I share the view of, I think, either the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) or my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), that a country dependent for its revenue on oil cannot survive when its oil pipeline is cut.

Sir Russell Johnston (Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber) : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Benn : No, I shall not give way again.

I believe, therefore, that the sanctions will be effective ; but that has to be put against what would happen otherwise I must also say something else to the House without in any way being offensive. Governments of any colour in any country are not the main practitioners of morality. America went into Panama and 3,000 people were killed. America went into Grenada. America supported Iraq when it attacked Iran. America did nothing when Cyprus was invaded and partitioned by Turkey. America has no moral authority, any more than any other super- power. The same would be true of the Soviet Union after Afghanistan, or wherever. It has no moral authority. Nor, might I add, because these things must be said and nobody else has said them, can we defend the Emir or the King of Saudi Arabia, neither of whom practise any democracy. I am not saying that they are not entitled to the protection of the UN charter--I have already said that they are--but, given the denunciations of the breaches of human rights in eastern Europe by Ministers, one might have expected one of them, in this dispute, to point out that a person found guilty of shoplifting in Riyadh will have his hand chopped off. Are we to live in a world where morality is seen as the product of a parliamentary majority?

The real issue is this. Everybody knows it and nobody has mentioned it. The Americans want to protect their oil supplies. I think that I am right in saying that not one Member on either side of the House has drawn attention to what the former Attorney-General of the United States, Ramsey Clark, said on the radio last night. He said that the United States forced Saudi Arabia to accept its army there because it wanted to protect its oil.

We are experienced as an imperial power and that will not shock the Conservatives. I am not asking anyone to be shocked, only to recognise the fact that stares us in the face. America has benefited much recently from cheap middle eastern oil. It was reported in the Financial Times that it has reduced its oil production and increased its oil imports from 31 per cent. to 52 per cent. It has become hooked on this cheap fluid that now has to be controlled by the American army. That is honestly the position. The United States wants a permanent base.

I have not had a distinguished military career like my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East, but I served in Egypt in 1945 and I still have my identity card saying that I was exempt from Egyptian law. I looked at it the other day. We had a base at Tel-el-Kebir in Egypt from 1888, when Mr. Gladstone put it there, to 1956. If one talked to any Egyptians, all they did was read a list of promises by successive British Governments about when we would withdraw our base. We withdrew in 1956 and were in again with the support of the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery)--he and I clashed at the time--within a few weeks.

Then there is the arms trade. That has been brought out a bit. A couple of years ago, in Algiers, I met a former Egyptian Foreign Minister who told me that there had been a seminar in Cairo about the crusades and that during the crusades European arms manufacturers supplied arms both to Richard Coeur de Lion and to Saladin. Nothing has really changed. Arms manufacturers have made billions of pounds from selling instruments of mass destruction, partly to hold down those colonial people so that the sheikhs will supply cheap oil, and partly because it is highly profitable to sell arms. I shall not try to differentiate between Governments, because the Labour Government did it too.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East said that it was wrong, and I shall have to put footnotes to that effect on every page of my diary--but at the same time, we did it too. The arms trade is a corrupt trade. If our troops have to fight those of Saddam Hussein--I hope that that does not happen--they will be fighting against modern weapons in part sold by Britain, France, America and Russia for profit. That is a major issue.

If we go to war--and there are those who think that we might--what will be our war aims? That is not an unreasonable question. Will it be to free Kuwait, to topple Hussein, or to destroy Iraqi weapons? My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition went further than the Prime Minister in setting the objective. She said that it was to arrest Saddam Hussein and to bring him before an international crimes tribunal. The Prime Minister said that on television. Are British troops to be sent in to fight before their objective has been clarified? The Government have never made clear what is their aim. However, it is clear that the United States, having helped to arm Hussein, is determined to bring him down and to establish a new base.

I do not need to dwell on the consequences of war. They include a massive loss of life and possibly an air attack on oil installations. In the peculiar circumstances, we would to some extent, if not in every sense, be taking on Islam. Stalin is remembered for asking a very silly question. He asked how many battalions the Pope had. [ Hon. Members-- : "Divisions."] We should ask how many divisions the prophet Mohammed had. There are 105 million Muslims in India alone. We have some here, too. I am sure that the BBC World Service will explain that that has nothing to do with the situation, but there are people who will see our action as an attempt to reimpose a white, rich control over an area once dominated by the British empire.

The Prime Minister courteously gave way to me when I asked what I hope was a relevant question. She said three times--so she must have meant it--that she already has the legal right to attack Iraq and that no further stages are necessary. The only consideration is that that will be done not at her discretion but at that of President Bush. I say to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that anyone who goes into the Lobby with the Government tomorrow night will be endorsing the view that no further action is needed to legalise an attack on Iraq.

Those who vote with the Government tomorrow will be voting for giving the Prime Minister a free hand or a blank cheque. Those who vote against the Government will be accepting the view expressed in my early-day motion, which calls on the Government

"to make a clear and unequivocal statement that it will not commit British Forces to offensive military operations against Iraq that have not been explicitly authorised by a Resolution passed by the Security Council, and under the provisions of the UN Charter, which deal with the use of force by the United Nations and under its military command."

I referred to two points of view, but others may think that it is better to reserve judgment and not to vote at all. Even those who cannot go with my view may not want to give the Prime Minister a free hand between now and 15 October.

Yet another view has been constructively touched upon by other speakers-- the belief that peace is possible, but that one must take a broad view of the factors involved. One must look both at the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and UN resolutions relating to the west bank. One cannot pick and choose between Security Council resolutions. One must have both a Palestinian state and security for Israel. One must deal also with the oil companies that are busy exploiting the situation as much as they can.There has been a 7 per cent. fall in oil production worldwide but a 100 per cent. increase in its price. How is that justified? Thank God for Winston Churchill, who in 1914, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty, nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Petroleum Company for £2 million. His speech on that occasion made the strongest case for public control and ownership of oil companies that one can find. Winston Churchill said that countries were being squeezed by the oil companies.

If there is to be a peace-keeping force, it would be better if it were Arab, but I turn to the longer, post-cold-war perspective to which our attention has been properly drawn by a number of speeches. One cannot have a new order for the middle east based on the redeployment of white power in the form of a permanent American army in Saudi Arabia. That will not work. One is no longer dealing with the natives who featured in Rudyard Kipling's poems but with a quite different world. For me, the United Nations is the General Assembly, not the bigwigs, permanent and rotating members who sit on the Security council. I personally would like to see direct elections to the General Assembly. They might only return one British Member of Parliament, but I would certainly be a candidate, if that were possible.

We are always being told that we must come to terms with reality and that we must not live in the past. The fact remains that we live in a very small world of many religions. There are fundamentalist Christians. When President Reagan spoke of an evil empire, he was declaring a Christian jihad against communism. Anyone who has visited America and listened to those Christian fundamentalists, who have not got into trouble and been removed, will know that they make their reputations out of their religious wars against communism. However, as right hon. and hon. Members know very well, the Americans stimulated Islam to defeat communism--but when communism changed, fundamentalism remained.

We shall have to plan and share the world's oil. America has only 2 per cent. of the world's population but uses 25 per cent of the world's resources. That situation cannot be allowed to last, even if America has a big army. The real function of the United Nations is to act as the custodian of social justice. It should not serve just as a policeman. The first meeting of the UN General Assembly took place in Central Hall, Westminster in 1945. Then, Gladwyn Jebb was its acting secretary-general. Some people may remember that. I was just back from war. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East and a former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, know that the UN was the great hope to end wars. However, it was more than that. It was meant to promote social justice. Those right hon. and hon. Members who support the Government's interpretation of the law, and their readiness to use their discretion without referring back to the House again, will vote with the Government in the Lobby tomorrow. Those who oppose the Government will vote with us, while others should abstain. I urge caution, because many other western European nations are being very cautious and have not sent troops. Many of the non-aligned countries are not really behind the action being taken by America and Britain. It is time to try to take some of the hatred out of the situation. I shall never forget the day I was first elected to Parliament. No one ever does. It was 30 November 1950. That same day, President Truman said that he might drop an atom bomb on China. We were then using against the red Chinese the language that we are now using against Saddam Hussein. They were seen as worse than the Russians. Nevertheless, there was a Peace for China Committee, and China was later admitted to the United Nations. Whatever the Chinese Government may have done in Tiananmen square, no one wants a war with the Chinese, otherwise they would not have been given Hong Kong-- [Laughter.] So much for the right of self-determination. 

Mr. Heffer : Does not my right hon. Friend agree that it is not just a question of giving the Chinese Hong Kong but that the Americans have just agreed that they should have a special relationship and make special economic arrangements with China, despite the events of Tiananmen square? 

Mr. Benn : I know that my hon. Friend, whom I much respect, will agree with me that morality and power march uneasily together in public life. At the time of the Suez crisis, the Father of the House and I clashed --something of which he generously reminds me occasionally. What was said then about Nasser is exactly the same as what is being said now about Saddam Hussein. The Falklands may be too close for comfort. Not all that many people looking back, think that that huge expenditure was justified-- [Interruption.] I do not think so. I have been in a minority before, and I might be in one now, but that does not worry me-- 

[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker : Order.

 Mr. Benn : In 1986, there was the bombing of Libya which tried to kill Gaddafi--it killed his god-daughter, I believe. Our bases were used for that. Some people took the opposite view.

I urge caution because it is not the hardware of military weapons that frightens me. A gun cannot go off by itself. It is the hatred which makes people want to use weapons. That is the fuel of war and in the past few months we have had the most vicious war propaganda pumped down our throats. The temper of peace, of which Pandit Nehru used to speak, is what we need, and we want to be cautious and to let it work its way through the United Nations. For that reason, Mr. Speaker--it would not have been possible without some help from the Chair--I intend to divide the House against the Adjournment motion tomorrow. 

Several Hon. Members rose -- 

Mr. Speaker : Order. I remind the House that the 10-minutes rule on speeches will operate between 6 and 8 o'clock.

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Tony Benn's Finest Speech Never Delivered

Tony Benn's finest speech was never delivered, and had never been published – this is what he wanted to say

Tony Benn never delivered his finest speech. When his father, Viscount Stansgate died in November 1960, Benn inherited his title. Under the law as it stood, Benn had to give up his seat as Labour MP for Bristol South-East. But Benn wanted to remain in the Commons and not go to the Lords. He argued people should have the right to renounce their peerage – a cause he had advocated for some years and for which he had enlisted the support of, among others, Sir Winston Churchill.

On April 13, 1961, following a report from the Committee of Privileges, which ruled against Benn, the writ was due to be moved in the House of Commons to hold a by-election in Bristol to elect Benn’s successor. Benn asked the Speaker, Sir Harry Hylton-Foster, for permission to address MPs from the Bar of the Commons – a small area just inside the door to the chamber. The precedent of a peer addressing MPs from the Bar was established when the Duke of Wellington reported on the victory at Waterloo.

The Speaker refused to let Benn deliver his speech. The by-election went ahead. Benn stood – and more than doubled his majority. However, as his peerage disqualified him from serving in the Commons, Benn’s Conservative opponent, Malcolm St Clair, became the new MP.  Two years later, Parliament passed a bill to allow members of the House of Lords to renounce their peerage. Benn did so immediately, St Clair resigned as MP, and a further by-election was held. Benn duly won and took his seat once more in the Commons.

A few years ago, when I was compiling an anthology, modestly entitled Democracy (published by Mainstream and also available as an e-book, since you ask), I wanted to include something from Benn’s battle to renounce his peerage. Ever generous, he gave me a copy of the speech he was not allowed to deliver, and which had never been published. This enabled me to make the improbable claim that I had compiled an anthology that included a scoop.

This is what Tony Benn wanted to say.

Tony Benn’s case for being allowed to remain an MP

Mr Speaker,

I am most grateful to you, Sir, and to the House as a whole for permitting me to attend and speak before reaching a decision on my petition. I am very conscious that the issues to be raised today are of the highest constitutional importance as compared to which my own fate must be counted as of little importance. I shall not, therefore, weary Members with the special circumstances of my case but will address myself to the major questions now before the House. However I ask for indulgence to make three personal references.

First I make no apology for wishing to remain a Member of Parliament. Service in this House of Commons is the highest service to which any man can aspire and ought to be upheld as such. The fount of our honour is the ballot box and it would be a bad day for this House if its Members secretly cherished a preference for the other place.

Secondly I must express my thanks for the unfailing support of those who sent me to this place to represent them. Many years ago Edmund Burke, who also represented Bristol, made clear what loyalty as M.P. owes to his constituents. I have been sustained in these lonely months by the touching loyalty of constituents for their MP.

The Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses of Bristol have petitioned both Houses and the Great Seal of the City. Yesterday a fresh petition was presented, signed by over 10,000 of my electors. If the House made it necessary to consult the more formally I have no doubt what their answer would be.

My third and final personal point is this. Whatever Parliament may ultimately decide about it I am asking that the Stansgate peerage which was created for a special purpose, having now served that purpose, should be allowed to lapse completely and for all time – preserving no privileges for the future. This is the united view of the whole family including my wife, my eldest son, my brother, my mother and was shared by my beloved father.

I now turn to the report of the Committee of Privileges. The Committee delved deeply into the customs of Parliaments going back to 1299. In its report it chose to rest upon two very ancient precedents.

The first was the opinion of Mr Justice Doddridge in 1626 that a peerage is “a personal dignity annexed to posterity and fixed in the blood”. The Second was Mr Speaker Onslow’s opinion in 1760 that “Attendance in both Houses is considered a service and the two services are incompatible with each other”. I should like to point out that neither of these rulings have ever been laid down in Statute nor judicially determined. From these precedents all subsequent decisions flow. The Committee did not feel called upon to “express any view as to whether a change in the law is desirable”.

In considering the report the House is not obliged to interpret its duties so narrowly. Indeed the main question today is what the law should be. Is it right to endorse decisions made in 1626 and 1760 in the totally different circumstances of 1961? In the intervening years there have been fundamental changes in the composition, powers and indeed the whole character of both Houses.

Today the Commons, strengthened by the Reform Acts, the Parliament Acts and the establishment of universal franchise, enjoys unquestioned supremacy: where there is a conflict of duty between willing elected membership of this House and unwilling hereditary membership of the House of Lords can there be any doubt which should take precedence?

The phraseology of the Writ of Summons to the Lords was described as being “archaic” by the present Attorney-General in evidence he submitted to a Committee of the House of Lords in 1955. The Lords endorsed this view in June 1958 when a Standing Order was passed providing that any peer who does not answer his Writ of Summons within 35 days shall be automatically given leave of absence for the remainder of the Parliament.

If therefore the Lords themselves attach so little importance to the Writ of Summons why should this House rank it above the duties we perform as servants of our constituents? This House has throughout its history always protected its Members against those who sought to interfere with them. And in the process it has never shrunk from conflict with the Lords and even the Crown.

Does it make sense now, when those battles have long since been won, to disqualify a Member who wants to serve here and to deliver him in response to an “archaic” Writ of Summons that the Lords do not enforce? There is here a simple contradiction between the common law and common sense. It should surely be resolved by legislation that will permit all who renounce the privileges of peerage to enjoy the rights of commoners.

What are the objections raised against this simple proposal? First it is said that constitutional changes should not be made to suit the convenience of one person. There is no argument about that. This case must stand or fall on its general merits. Parliament did not remove the disqualification on Catholics because it liked O’Connell or atheists because it sympathised with Bradlaugh. It did so because it was right. The man concerned was only the occasion for change.

Secondly it is said that this will breach the hereditary basis of the House of Lords. Yet four years ago the Life Peerages Bill provided for recruitment on an entirely non-hereditary basis which involves far more fundamental changes.

Thirdly it is said that this will cut off an important source of recruitment to the Lords as if young men ritually sacrificed could somehow revitalise the ageing peers. It is an argument more appropriate to Mau Mau than to the Mother of Parliaments.

Fourthly it is believed by some that this change would undermine the Throne itself. But such a proposition has only to be stated openly for its manifest absurdity to be apparent. It would indeed be a poor outlook for the monarchy if its maintenance were to depend on the insecure reputation and uncertain future of the House of Peers.

All these arguments and objections rest upon the assumption that our constitution is so precariously balanced on a pedestal of tradition that any change will threaten its stability. But to believe that is totally to misread the whole history of Parliament – rich with examples of brilliant innovations and studded with new precedents that have shaped our destiny.

If Mr Speaker Lenthall had been bound by tradition when Charles I forced an entry to arrest the five Members he would not have returned his famous answer to the King asserting the supremacy of the Commons.

Our ancient pageantry is but a cloak covering the most flexible and adaptable system of Government ever devised by man. It has been copied all over the world just because it is such a supreme instrument of peaceful change. In Parliament tradition has always served as a valued link, reminding us of our history, never as a chain binding us to the past. To misunderstand that would be to misunderstand everything that this House has achieved over the centuries.

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  Tony Benn was known as an eloquent and inspirational speaker. 

 Here are ten of his most memorable quotes

1) “If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.”

Tony Benn was interviewed in Sicko, Michael Moore’s documentary film about the health industry in the US. Explaining the post-war creation of the welfare state, he said the popular mood of the 1945 election was: “If you can have full employment by killing Germans, why can’t we have full employment by building hospitals, building schools?”

Sicko Link

2) His “Five questions” for the powerful.

Tony Benn’s final speech to the House of Commons as MP was an appropriately eloquent farewell, in which he talked widely on his view of the role of parliament and the wider question of democracy. As Hansard records, he said:

In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.

3) “Making mistakes is how you learn.”

Interviewed recently for Radio 4’s Today program, Tony Benn was asked to look back on his career. He replied:

I made every mistake in the book, but making mistakes is how you learn. I would be ashamed if I ever said anything I didn’t believe in, to get on personally.

4) “I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so”

With a typically memorable turn of phrase, Tony Benn signalled the end of his parliamentary career in 1999, when he announced he would not be standing for re-election at the next general election. Asked whether he would be taking his place in the House of Lords, the former Viscount Stansgate - Benn renounced his peerage back in 1963 - replied: “Don’t be silly.”

5) “The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.”

Given the above, this quote is not especially surprising, but worth repeating. Tony Benn was a lifelong campaigner for constitutional reform, and introduced a bill that would have allowed him to renounce his peerage as early as 1955.

6) “I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.”

Another quote from Tony Benn’s interview with Michael Moore in Sicko, in which he highlighted poverty and healthcare inequality as a democratic issue. “The people in debt become hopeless, and the hopeless people don’t vote... an educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern,” he said.

7) “Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself”

Tony Benn thought any meaningful change could only come from below, and felt apathy was openly encouraged by those in positions of power. “The Prime Minister said in 1911, 14 years before I was born, that if women get the vote it will undermine parliamentary democracy. How did apartheid end? How did anything happen?”

8) “We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.”

Blamed by many for contributing to Labour’s lack of electoral success during the 1980s, Tony Benn was a totem for those who rejected the shift to the right widely seen as necessary if the party was to regain power. This shift was eventually completed under Tony Blair, who pushed through the abandonment of clause IV and redefined Labour as a party comfortable with privatisation and free market economics. The quote above indicates why Benn resisted such a move.

9) “There is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons.”

After his retirement from parliament, Benn became the public face of the Stop the War coalition. In a particularly spiky edition of BBC Question Time, his exchanges with US Republican John Bolton included this broadside:

I was born about a quarter of a mile from where we are sitting now and I was here in London during the Blitz. And every night I went down into the shelter. 500 people killed, my brother was killed, my friends were killed. And when the Charter of the UN was read to me, I was a pilot coming home in a troop ship: ‘We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.’ That was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation and you tore it up. And it’s a war crime that’s been committed in Iraq, because there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons.

10) “A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.”

Tony Benn’s calcified view of the US as an imperialist force left him on the margins of mainstream opinion during the cold war, but a voice of reason to many after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. 

 Tony Benn puffs on his pipe as he listens to speeches during the second day of the 66th annual Labour Party Conference, in Scarborough, England. Photograph: Laurence Harris/AP

To a life well lived in the pursuit of fairness for the working man and those less fortunate in life

 Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn

 April 3, 1925 - March 14, 2014, 

 Rest in Peace