This is a succinct and highly readable biography of one of the most
interesting political figures of the later 20th century. It is
prefaced with a foreword by Benn himself and appended with an
interview given by him, while the project as a whole has clearly
enjoyed his cooperation. As one might expect in such circumstances,
the result is a largely favourable account and as such is likely to
arouse some of the controversy which Benn has always attracted.
Although there is no doubt where Powell's sympathies lie, he has
done a fine job in analyzing the nature of Benn's political
philosophy and in demonstrating the consistent commitment to causes
which has characterised his life. In an age which appears to have
sacrificed principle for public image and replaced debate with
spin, it is refreshing to reflect upon a career which exemplifies
what we are in danger of losing in British politics. In describing
the significant events with which Benn has been involved, from his
struggle to renounce his title through his 11 years in office to
his bid for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party in 1981 and
his campaigns on behalf of the miners, CND and many others, it is
difficult not to admire a man who has stuck to his beliefs, always
championed the rights and opportunities of working people, and
remains the undiminished voice of socialism in this country.
(Kirkus UK)
For much of his half-century career in the House of Commons, Tony
Benn has been the most loved and loathed man in British politics.
He has been idolized by the left, and reviled with equal measure by
the Westminster establishment, not least by New Labour. Once tipped
to lead the Labour Party, Benn's growing disillusionment with what
he regarded as the democratic deficit infecting politics,
reinforced his resolve to continue playing the role he valued most,
as a good House of Commons Man.David Powell's fascinating new
biography traces Tony Benn's extraordinary fifty year political
career from the day he first entered the House in 1950. He argues
that Benn's commitment to the House of Commons was fortified by his
experiences during the thirty months when he fought to renounce his
peerage and remain an MP; then during the twelve years he spent in
government, and finally during the two decades he spent on the back
benches, having been defeated in the bruising campaign for the
Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party. Each was to provide him with
an insight into the workings of power and cumulatively they were to
convince him of the charade that passed for democracy not only in
Westminster and in the Labour Party, but in the European Union and
in the wider in the global context, with democratic ideals
subordinated to the political and economic power of the United
States. Benn has always a controversial figure. He was widely
caricatured as Bogey Benn by the Tories during the 1970s and was
more recently anathematised by Tony Blair as the man who almost
knocked the Labour party over the edge of the cliff into
extinction. Nonetheless many of the policies he championed, and for
which he was widely belittled, have since entered the statute
books. Indeed, if history is a chronicle of ironies, there can have
been little more ironic than when, following Benn's valedictory
speech in the Commons in 2001, a Tory backbencher commended him to
fellow MPs as Britain's greatest living Parliamentarian.
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