Tony Ben who has died at the age of 88
was the greatest prime minister Britain
never had the greatest labor leader that
labor never had although he came very
close actually to being the leader of
the labor party in
1981 he came within 1% of becoming the
deputy leader of the party and the
elderly leader Michael Fu would soon
think have made way for him it was an
epic campaign in which I was the
Scottish organizer I was a labor party
official at the time and the chairman of
the labor party in Scotland and Mr Ben
rang me up to consult me before deciding
to run and I wholeheartedly supported
him then as now Tony Ben was quite
simply the finest exponent of the
Socialist case the socialist idea in the
entirety of the 20th century and on into
the 21st he was without peer as a
speaker as a thinker as a writer as a
diarist as a
communicator uh there was
nobody in the whole country like him he
could Captivate huge audiences in the
pal of his hand with the most powerful
incredibly visionary
ideas of alternatives to what we have
and what we had and he'd always in a way
been like that I first grew to love him
in the 1960s I grew up in a labor
household where Harold Wilson was the
son and a constellation of stars were
around him really big stars Barbara
Castle Roy Jenkins Tony Crossland
Richard Crossman James cigan uh many
others maybe 10 in the Wilson cabinet
could have become Prime Minister in the
afternoon should they have been needed
but of them all Tony Ben was always the
most Innovative the most Progressive the
most dynamic the most inspiring uh of
those stars at least in my household and
when I first met him at the labor
conference in Blackpool in
1974 so 40 years ago uh I told him so
and we became close uh from that day uh
until his last day uh I worked with him
as I said in the great epic Deputy
leadership campaign uh of which he was
cheated by the way only by the very
powerful super votes of a group of
members of parliament who cast their
vote against Mr Ben and then promptly
defected from the labor party to the sdp
which then kept Mrs thater in power for
a decade and and now sits in David
Cameron's Tory cabinet so in fact Mr Ben
was cheated of the Deputy leadership and
thus the leadership of the labor party
by traitors to the very idea of Labor
there was also a a rather significant
Schism opened at that time with what
were called the soft left people like
Neil kinnick and the late Robin Cook who
backed an alternative no hope candidate
just in order to divide Mr Ben's votes
and they succeeded though by the very
narrowest of margins the STP got their
30 pieces of silver by sitting in
Cameron's Tory government Neil kinnick
is now an establishment clown in the
House of Lords he did his bit too if Mr
Ben had won the labor leadership it's
almost impossible now to imagine what
might have been possible Mr Ben would
have withdrawn Britain from NATO
withdrawn us from the European economic
community on Democratic grounds rather
than on any xenophobic ones he was no
uker he would have nationalized the
banks the pharmaceutical companies the
great commanding Heights of the British
economy he would have introduced workers
control into their lives he would have
put all that Progressive dynamism that
he had displayed since the 1960s into
practice now of course if he had become
the labor leader 1981 or
1982 we might have lost the next general
election but then we did anyway we might
have lost the general election after
that under Mr Ben's leadership but then
we did anyway we might even have lost
the general election after that under Mr
Ben's leadership but then we did anyway
the point is we might not have lost them
because we would have had at our head
the most convincing advocate of the
Socialist idea of the alternative
society that the British labor movement
ever
produced due to boundary changes Mr Ben
lost his seat in Parliament in 1983 but
he was quickly back in the minor
Heartland in darbishire in Chesterfield
and he remained a towering Majestic
figure
in Parliament and well beyond it uh
until he decided to give up parliament
in 2001 in order to spend more time on
politics he wrote wonderful Diaries
wonderful books gave wonderful
broadcasts made really significant
television interventions like the time
when after the BBC had refused to
broadcast the disasters emergency
committee appeal for the suffering
people in Gaza under Israeli bombardment
Mr Ben went on their news program and
simply read out the address of the
appeal and made that appeal himself he
was of course and died as the honorary
president of the stop the war Coalition
which he led from the beginning and
which became the most significant and
certainly the very biggest by far mass
movement ever in British political
history he was a great family man I have
a picture of him he published it in one
of his Diaries of him holding my baby
daughter in his arms she's now a mother
of four and he posed for pictures with
all of her children too he loved
children he was kindly honorable decent
he was a real gentleman if you can
imagine that kindly Old Gentleman who
sat at the back of the train waving his
handkerchief to the kids on the
Bank by the railway in the movie The
Railway children that was Tony Ben he
was a kindly gentleman he was a
quintessentially British socialist
figure of the very very best kind the
top drawer many people think he was an
aristocrat he was not in fact an
aristocrat although he inherited and
skewed a VI County his father had been
given that peage uh as a liberal
politician uh albeit a hereditary peage
that Mr Ben changed the British
constitution in order to be allowed to
continue to serve in the House of
Commons which he did with such
distinction when he rose to speak on a
platform or on his feet in the House of
Commons you could have heard a pin drop
they never was anybody better and we'll
be very lucky if there ever is anybody
better he was not an aristocrat but he
was a prince amongst men and though he's
mourn today uh by some Hypocrites who
are very careful to make clear that they
don't agree didn't agree with many of
his views in truth Mr Ben's views are
shared and were supported by the great
majority of the British people working
backwards Mr Ben was the leader of the
campaign against the war in Iraq
the vast majority of people in Britain
were against it too he believed in
public ownership of gas and electricity
and Railway and post the vast majority
of British people uh feel exactly the
same way he hated the corruption and
undemocratic nature of today's European
Union most British people agree with
that too he hated nuclear weapons he
hated our alliance with NATO uh with
with its um unquenchable thirst for war
after war after War most British people
share that view too he didn't much like
the House of Lords which is why he
fought so hard against going into that
good night and most British people feel
that way too yet he managed to express
all of these views in the teeth of
unbelievable media hostility if you want
to if you want there if you want to
remember what the media hostility to
Tony Ben was when he was really
challenging for power as opposed to
today now that he's safely gone think
Arthur scargle think Ken Livingston
think Bob Crow put them all together and
double it or trible it that's how bad it
was whole pages of serious newspapers
were given over in
1981 to tell us in the words of cod
psychologists how Tony B was literally
insane and yet the people never believed
it I remember one incident in particular
in
1981 I was traveling all over the
country with him we stopped in a
Motorway service station after a great
meeting in Liverpool at the St George's
Hall the night before first everybody in
the cafeteria came over to greet him in
those days there were no camera phones
so every person had to get a very time
consuming autograph then out of the
kitchens wearing their aprons and their
Chef's hats came all of the workers in
the service station then people seeing
this kafuffle going on started to come
in from the petrol station for court
abandoning their vehicles in order to do
so then Tony got up on a chair and made
an impromptu speech it felt like a
revolution and maybe it could have been
just at the of his campaign for power uh
Mr Ben was struck down with a very
obscure syndrome called the Gan bar
syndrome which sent him to his bed for
crucial weeks during the campaign
affected his nervous system left him
shaky on the legs for the rest of his
life it was suspicious to those of us
close to him at the time and frankly
it's suspicious now especially what we
now suspect about what happened to Hugo
Chavez Fidel Castro uh president
Kirchner of Argentina and other
left-wing leaders but that's a story
perhaps for another day it is the
greatest of the many privileges of my
life that I was a lieutenant of the
great Tony Ben that I marched with him
that I helped to sustain his epic
challenge for a different Britain and a
different world
he was a prince among men and in the
words of Shakespeare he was a man take
him for all in all I shall not look upon
his like again Tony
Ben I salute you