Tony Benn

Tony Benn was one of the twentieth century's most charismatic politicians. The Benn Diaries, kept for almost seventy years, are a uniquely authoritative, fascinating and readable record of the political life of our times.This single-volume edition is the selected highlights of the complete diaries from Tony's schooldays in the 1940s until he ceased keeping a record of his day-to-day thoughts in 2009.The narrative starts with Tony as a schoolboy and takes the reader through his experience as a trainee pilot during the war, his tentative first days as a backbencher in Atlee's post-war government, through his battle to remain in the Commons after the death of his father. From cabinet posts and leadership battles, through election highs ands lows to becoming a retired widower. Tony Benn was a consistently radical voice campaigning for the causes he was passionate about.This volume of The Benn Diaries is the definitive legacy of the best political diarist of our times.

Emphasizing the importance of the future and those who will live through it, this statement seeks to address the lessons that can be learned from the past. Striving to prevent the next generation from making the same mistakes as its predecessors, this recollection highlights those who struggled for justice and inspired the author in his daily work. Disentangling the real questions from the day-to-day business of politics, this autobiography lends strength to the two fires that have burned from the beginning of time—the flame of anger against injustice and the flame of hope.

The Benn Diaries, embracing the years 1940-1990, are already established as a uniquely authoritative, fascinating and readable record of political life. The selected highlights that form this single-volume edition include the most notable events, arguments and personal reflections throughout Benn's long and remarkable career as a leading politician.The narrative starts with Benn as a schoolboy and takes the reader through his youthful wartime experiences as a trainee pilot, his nervous excitement as a new MP during Clement Atlee's premiership and the tribulations of Labour in the 1950s, when the Conservatives were in firm control. It ends with the Tories again in power, but on the eve of Margaret Thatcher's fall, while Tony Benn is on a mission to Baghdad before the impending Gulf War.Over the span of fifty years, the public and private turmoil in British and world politics is recorded as Benn himself moves from wartime service to become the baby of the House, Cabinet Minister, and finally the Commons' most senior Labour Member.

Tony Benn is the longest serving MP in the history of the Labour Party. He left Parliament in 2001, after more than half a century in the House of Commons, to devote more time to politics. This volume of his Diaries describes and comments, in a refreshing and honest way, upon the events of a momentous decade including two world wars, a change of government in Britain and the emergence of New Labour, of which he makes clear he is not a member. Tony Benn's account is a well documented, formidable and principled critique of the New Labour Project, full of drama, opinion, humour, anecdotes and sparkling pen-portraits of politicians on both sides of the political divide. But his narrative is also broader and more revealing about day-to-day political life, covering many aspects normally disregarded by historians and lobby correspondents, relating to his work in the constituency, including his advice surgeries. This volume also offers far more of an insight into Tony Benn's personal life, his thoughts about the future and his relationship with his family, especially his remarkable wife Caroline, whose illness and death overshadow these years. Tony Benn is a unique figure on the British political landscape: a true democrat, a passionate socialist and diarist without equal. With this volume, his published Diaries cover British politics for over sixty years.

In this final volume of diaries, Tony Benn reflects on the compensations and the disadvantages of old age.With the support of a small circle of friends and his extended family, he continues his activities on behalf of social justice, peace and accountability in public life, to a background of political change and the international economic crisis.Following an illness in 2009 the diaries, kept for over sixty years, cease. Published here alongside these last diaries are Tony Benn’s highly personal insights into the challenges of old age and failing health, of widowhood,and of moving out of the family home after sixty years.Finally, we share in Tony Benn's hopes for the future based on his years of experience and his natural optimism.

When Tony Benn left Parliament after 51 years he quoted his wife Caroline’s remark that now he would have "more time for politics." And so this has proved: in the first seven years of this century, he has helped reinvigorate national debate through public meetings, mass campaigns, and appearances in the media, passionately bringing moral and political issues to wide audiences. And throughout, as ever, he has been keeping his diaries.Commenting on the demise of the New Labor project from the reelection of Tony Blair in 2001 to the ultimate foreign policy disaster of Iraq, he gives prescient accounts of the government’s by-passing of Cabinet, parliament, and the party, of the "war on terror," the debate about Islam, globalisation, and the changes in British society. Although he is no longer in power or in parliament, Tony Benn remains a figure of enormous respect whose direct views, honestly expressed, have often awakened the national conscience. His latest Diaries, human and challenging in turn, are an enthralling read.

Tony Benn was one of the twentieth century's most charismatic politicians. The Best of Benn showcases his powers of original thinking and communication over seven decades.From 'the baby of the house' to a retired widower, he was a consistently radical campaigning voice on issues such as the death penalty, the case against the European Union, opposition to war and support of workers' rights.This volume brings together Tony Benn's electrifying speeches, thoughtful journalism and passionate advocacy of often unconventional causes.

Born into a family with a strong, radical dissenting tradition in which enterprise and public service were combined, Tony Benn was taught to believe that the greatest sin in life was to waste time and money. Life in his Victorian-Edwardian family home in Westminster was characterised by austerity, the last vestiges of domestic service, the profound influence of his mother, a dedicated Christian and feminist, and his colourful and courageous father, elected as a Liberal MP in 1906 and later serving in Labour Cabinets under Ramsay MacDonald and Clem Atlee. Benn followed in his father's footsteps, becoming one of the most famous and respected figures in modern British politics.Dare to be a Daniel feelingly recalls Tony Benn's years as one of three brothers experiencing life in the nursery, the agonies of adolescence and of school, where boys were taught to 'keep their minds clean' and the shadow of fascism and the Second World War with its disruption and family loss. This moving memoir also describes his emergence from World War Two as a keen socialist about to embark upon marriage and an unknown political future. The book ends with some of Tony Benn's reflections on many of the most important and controversial issues of our time.

Page edges tanned, owner's inscription. Orders received by 3pm Sent from the UK that weekday.

Tony Years of Hope Diaries, Letters and Papers 1940-1962 {The Benn Diaries}

1963 saw Labour's emergence from its 'wilderness years' in Opposition, and the election of Harold Wilson following the unexpected death of Hugh Gaitskell. In the first Wilson government of 1964 Benn was made Postmaster General and became known as an innovator for his introduction of the Giro and arguing for a radical broadcasting policy. After Labour's landslide victory of 1966 he was appointed to the Cabinet as Minister of Technology, but Labour's honeymoon came to an abrupt end in 1967 with the introduction of devaluation, leading to disilliusionment with the Government.Tony Benn's account on his relations with the industrialists, television and press chiefs, the Palace and the diplomatic world as well as trade unionists, civil servants, and his Cabinet colleagues, reveals the workings of our political and economic systems at the highest level.Out of the Wilderness is a unique political record of the 1960s, told by a man who served in five Labour administrations and who today is one of the most experienced figures both in and out of the House of Commons.

This third volume of Benn's political diaries brings us to a watershed in British politics - the post-war consensus is finally buried, with the defeat of Heath, the stormy resignation of Wilson and Callaghan's brief rule preparing the way for a new era of Thatcher domination. 1973 saw Ted Heath's ailing government locked in confrontation with the miners and the three day week, incapable of responding to the OPEC oil crisis. Candle-lit offices and power cuts finally forced a general election on the issue of "who governs Britain", returning the surprised Labour party back into power. But Tony Benn himself is under attack from all sides - an increasingly hostile and crafty press, the CBI, the Treasury and, most important, Number 10 itself - as he attempts to pursue the radical policies in Labour's election manifesto. The first two volumes of Benn's political diaries are entitled, Out of the Wilderness and Office Without Power.

Tony Benn's final instalment of diaries centres on a decade which saw the disintegration of Eastern Europe, an unprecedented assault on the labour movement at home, the fall of Margaret Thatcher and the tragic war in the Gulf. It is a period which marks the peak of Tony Benn's reputation as a brilliant parliamentarian. This final volume of diaries gives us insight into an era of extraordinary international and domestic political life making it one of the most important political writings of our time.

As Secretary of State for energy, Tony Benn was concerned with a major dispute at Windscale and as President of the EEC Energy Council, his time was taken up with decisions about oil policy and nuclear power. Discussions in Cabinet concentrated on the volatile international scene, President Carter's reappraisal of American nuclear and foreign policy, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, mounting difficulties with the Common Market and Britain's disputed membership of the European Monetary system. On the domestic front there was growing evidence of anti-democratic intelligence activity.

Tony Benn's second volume of diaries, which spans the years 1968-72, is a unique record of British politics as observed both from the heart of the Cabinet and the Labour Party.George Brown's spectacular resignation and Cecil King's plot to overthrow Wilson are just two of the events which dominate the opening chapter, and introduce the last years of Labour's increasingly demoralised government.And for the first time in a political diary, Labour's experience of Opposition after the unexpected and shattering defeat of 1970 is revealed. Here, too, are recorded the bitter arguments over the Common Market, in which Tony Benn emerged as the principal advocate of a referendum on Britain's entry - and which foreshadowed the Labour/SDP schism of 1981. The result is a fascinating and invaluable document of the times.

Dark blue cover under dust jacket

In 2001, Tony Benn, one of the most influential socialist politicians in Europe, retired from the British House of Commons after almost 50 years in politics, to 'devote more time to politics'. One of the ways in which he carried out his resolution was to write a series of weekly columns for the Morning Star, a British socialist daily newspaper.These columns reflect the breadth of Benn's political concerns, covering both domestic and international politics, and the best of them have been collected here. Benn writes with a controlled passion about the Labour party (old and new), the threats to democracy and the need for a viable protest movement, and the events and repercussions of September 11, 2001.

Do we need a Monarchy? Or does it represent everything that is hidebound and stifling about Britain? The headlines tell the story: every British Institution is in crisis As a nation we have lost our way, What we have always been smugly told, is false. Our constitution is NOT the best in the world, nor is our legal system the fairest, nor is our society more open, nor are we freer than other nations. Things taken for granted are now being seriously questioned, as people realize how much of our political and economic life is outside our control. Ever since Tony Benn changed our constitution by renouncing his peerage, he has been developing the case he now outlines. His Commonwealth of Britain Bill (reproduced in the Text) is 'the first attempt to overthrow the monarchy since Cromwell' GUARDIAN. He argues for a radical overhaul of our political system, sweeping away privilege and unaccounted power and substituting for it a written constitution and democratic citizenship. Only by freeing ourselves from our historical shackles - including, but by no means only, the monarchy - can we be truly free.

This is the first series of Labour MP Tony Benn’s behind-the-scenes revelations from the highly acclaimed BBC Radio 4 series. 'The Observer' called it ‘Irresistible fly-on-the-wall history as it actually happens.’ Late each night for over twenty-five years the Labour MP and former Secretary of State Tony Benn sat alone and dictated onto tape his account of the daily events at the heart of government. The immediacy, passion and mood is striking as he unburdens himself of the pressure and stress, trials and tribulations of government and opposition with accounts veering from anecdotal to almost confessional. Events recalled in the first of these unique and remarkable recordings - heard by the public for the very first time on Radio 4 - include Harold Wilson’s surprise resignation in 1976; the potentially catastrophic 1977 strike at Windscale; the year-long miners’ strike in 1984 and the general election in 1992.

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PAPERBACK

This abridged audio edition of the Diaries, read by the author, conveys even more directly than the Diaries themselves the achievements, conflicts, and dramatic events in a unique political life.

Tony Benn, parliamentarian now retired "to devote more time to politics," performs before audiences in London and Glasgow, talking about his life in politics and his opinions on matters of current concern, finishing by fielding questions from the audience.

This centenary anthology of Tony Benn's speeches, writings and interviews is a timely reminder of his political potency and the urgency of his agenda across a wide set of the consequences of empire, the need to embrace industrial change, reform of the state machine and the management of politics.Called the 'most dangerous man in Britain' by the Daily Mail, Tony Benn, Labour MP for over fifty years, was the most distinguished socialist politician of his era. Holding several significant cabinet posts in the 1960s and '70s, he competed for the Labour Party deputy leadership in 1981 and party leadership in 1988. Throughout his career he put forward a series of arguments on constitutional reform, the economy and foreign affairs - popular and influential policy positions which became known as 'Bennism' and set the template for the democratic socialism of the 2010s. A charismatic orator, a life-long campaigner for peace, and a charming disruptor of the mainstream consensus, Benn reached national treasure status in his retirement, his firebrand politics too often overlooked.The introduction to this collection, written by his daughter, the writer Melissa Benn, offers a more personal portrait of the man, showing how his politics informed all parts of his life. The book also includes a previously unpublished interview with Tony Benn conducted towards the end of his life.

Paperback. Signed and dedicated by Tony Benn on front endpaper. Covers are a little edge-worn, with several surface scratches, creases and small indentations. Spine is slightly cocked and is lightly creased, with minor wear to ends. Leading corners are a little worn and creased. Page block is a little faded and grubby. Binding is sound and pages are tight throughout. Text is clear. AF

When veteran politician, Tony Benn, retired from parliament to devote more time to politics a career move into the music business was not part of his retirement plan. But now the much loved elder statesman of British politics has teamed up with urban record producer, Charles Bailey - creator of the Don't shoot, Don't forget to vote and Met police rap campaigns - in a unique collaboration that is causing a stir in political and music industry circles. delivered by one of the greatest orators of our time, set to music composed by a 21st century maestro. of Commons debate on war in Iraq before the start of the bombing campaign in 1998 - laid over an ambient groove that mixes elements of jazz, R&B and classical music.