British politician (1925-2014)
People at the top do not want to share their power. They've always got some marvellous reason: I'm following my religion; I'm following the laws of economics. Even Stalin: I'm representing the vanguard of the working class, so please don't cause trouble. That is the battle that every generation has, and yet we mustn't be pessimistic about it.
TONY BENN
interview, "Hope is the Key", Share International, January 2003
More and more communists are coming to realize that socialism without democracy is no socialism at all.... I believe that the next decade will see the growth in democratic socialism against the ideas of monetarism and corporation.
TONY BENN
speech to the European Republic Committee at the American Club in London, October 25, 1978
The reason the members of parliament and prime ministers, with all their defects, have to listen is because the Day of Judgement comes on polling day, whereas the bankers, the World Trade Organization, the IMF, the Pope, the mullahs, the rabbis, don't have to listen -- because they are there. Some of them say they're there because God gave them power, others say they are following the inescapable conclusions of a market-related society. But whatever justification they give they aren't accountable and can't be removed -- and I will not be governed by people I can't get rid of.
TONY BENN
interview, "Hope is the Key", Share International, January 2003
The key to any progress is to ask the question why? All the time. Why is that child poor? Why was there a war? Why was he killed? Why is he in power? And of course questions can get you into a lot of trouble, because society is trained by those who run it, to accept what goes on. Without questions we won't make any progress at all.
TONY BENN
interview, Creating Freedom
The crisis that we inherit when we come to power will be the occasion for fundamental change and not the excuse for postponing it.
TONY BENN
Speeches by Tony Benn
The word 'socialism' on my poster has not lost me a single vote. People will support you if you're serious. My complaint about the Labour movement is that it hasn't done any teaching for 40 years; it has always been on the defensive. Thatcher was successful because she was a teacher. Her values, of course, were rotten.
TONY BENN
The Times, April 3, 1992
Through talk, we tamed kings, restrained tyrants, averted revolution.
TONY BENN
attributed, The Changing Anatomy of Britain
Middle class Labour leaders are recaptured by the establishment when they die.
TONY BENN
Out of the Wilderness: Diaries, 1963-67
My legs are very wobbly now. I've always been slightly unsteady on my pins, but I do find myself swaying about a bit and I hope it isn't anything serious, because if I couldn't walk, I would be in a jam. But there will come a moment when I realise my political life is over. My hearing is absolutely completely gone! It's lovely, in the sense that I go along the street and I don't hear any traffic noise, but I don't hear anybody saying anything.
TONY BENN
A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine: The Last Diaries
When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.
TONY BENN
Independent Radio News, November 12, 1976
If you file your waste-paper basket for 50 years, you have a public library.
TONY BENN
The Daily Telegraph, March 5, 1994
Freedom is defended by the ballot box and not by the Division Lobby. If the Liberal Party now says that freedom rests in Parliament instead of seeing itself as the guardian of freedom outside Parliament, no wonder it is a tiny minority.
TONY BENN
Office Without Power: Diaries 1968-72
For those without personal wealth or political authority a trade union card and a ballot paper are the only two routes to political power.
TONY BENN
Arguments for Democracy
The demand for more popular power is building up most insistently in industry, and the pressure for industrial democracy has now reached such a point that a major change is now inevitable, at some stage. What is happening is not just a respectful request for consultation before management promulgates its decisions. Workers are not going to be fobbed off with a few shares ... or by a carbon copy of the German system of co-determination. The campaign is very gradually crystallizing into a demand for real workers' control. However revolutionary the phrase may sound; however many Trotskyite bogeys it may conjure up, that is what is being demanded and that is what we had better start thinking about.
TONY BENN
The Times, September 5, 1970
But if there is hope, it lies in ordinary working people. When you put it in words it sounds reasonable: it is when you look at the human beings passing you on the pavement that it becomes an act of faith.
TONY BENN
Arguments for Socialism
Politicians are bound to indicate what they would hope to do if they are elected to parliament, and that is a perfectly legitimate means of securing support--but they are less ready to admit that it may be impossible to fulfil their commitments once elected.
TONY BENN
Letters to My Grandchildren
Secrecy in decision-making does not occur by accident or default. It is because knowledge is power, and no government willingly gives up power to the Commons, the public, or anyone else. Open government would disclose more about the processes of decision-making, including the workings of the Cabinet committee system, reveal the roles of officials and advisers, and involve both admitting and encouraging pressure upon ministers.... If parliamentary democracy is, as I believe, a unique system of government, partly because it allows us to learn from our own mistakes in time to correct them, the raw material of that experience must be made available in time to use it for that purpose.
TONY BENN
speech to a Press Gallery luncheon, February 14, 1977
I must tell the House quite frankly that if I were confronted with a Japanese at this present moment and were asked to tell him that I believed that he was wrong in the treatment of those British prisoners in his hands, I could not but accept a similar criticism from him on the question of the atom bomb. I should be quite unable to avoid it. I am afraid I must say on the question of principle here involved--this question of moral principle--that I believe it to be humbug, when so many people, women, children, old folk, were killed by the atom bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. For every individual photograph that could be produced of a wounded and battered British prisoner of war in Japanese hands, I think one could find an equally horrible photograph of a victim of the atomic bomb.
TONY BENN
speech in the House of Commons, May 10, 1951
Marxism is now a world faith and must be allowed to enter into a continuous dialogue with other world faiths, including religious faiths.
TONY BENN
lecture on Karl Marx, March 16, 1982
How can those Christians who see monetarism being so cruelly applied to the old, the sick, the homeless, women, the black community, and the young unemployed, lead a struggle against this injustice from within an established church subject to a Cabinet and a parliamentary majority composed of those very people who are responsible for implementing those very policies?
TONY BENN
speech to St. James' Church, Piccadilly, March 2, 1983