The first time I became aware of Tony Benn was in the 1960s when he was busy putting Radio Caroline and the other offshore radio stations out of business. I was no big fan of his politics then or later, but a fascinating man to listen to whether you agreed with him or not.
Steve Richards is such a breath of fresh air in all of his analyses. His analysis especially from 19.10 on this spot on. Finally somebody that understands Corbyn's ascent in the context of 2008 and understand success is as much as to do with the times as is it is to do with the candidate.
Great analysis. Several years after this was posted and everything that’s happened since, I’m now reading Benn’s: “a blaze of autumn sunshine”. I highly recommend it, notably the comments/observations about Boris Johnson. Benn was a man well ahead of his time. RIP TB
Steve Richards right here to talk about how Benn's legacy is in many ways more apparent in the Conservative Party, perhaps absorbed via Benn's friendships with the likes of Enoch Powell and David Davis. The arguments he put forward for Brexit were repeated verbatim in 2016 by Tory right wingers. The internal party changes he heralded for electing leaders by the party members have been adopted by the Tories too, with the end result that a few thousand unaccountable party members gave us Liz Truss and Boris Johnson (and Corbyn for that matter). Benn's legacy really has been toxic.
@@briandelaney9710 That's an odd take, because they were in essence the same thing. Margret Thatcher made precisely the same arguments about democracy as Benn did - and once she became a back bencher was often seen to nod along to his speech in parliament. David Davis has made exactly the same arguments. Jacob Reese Mogg also made the same arguments. All of them, Benn, Thatcher, David, Reese Mogg, were making the same argument. About nationalistic democracy.
There is no doubt about the sincerity of Benn just like Foot and Corbyn but the fact remains when they were at their peak Labour suffered its heaviest defeats.
Benn's proposal for the 1975 referendum certainly didn't unite the cabinet. The likes of Roy Jenkins resigned as deputy leader, as did several others from their positions. Perhaps Barbara Castle's description of him illustrates it best: "He's like a schoolboy with a chemistry set who ends up blowing up all his mates with his experiments."
Benn was the only Labour figure to attend Powell's funeral saying when questioned why ...he was my friend"although Thatcher atestifues that she attended Eric Heffer Westminster funeral because he was "one of ours"
Tony Benn wrote in his diaries that Margaret Thatcher did attend Eric Heffer's funeral. He wrote that he found her weeping. Surprisingly, in spite of their wide political differences, there was a mutual regard between Thatcher and Heffer.
Really enjoying these, came on to them after listening to your book Prime Ministers. Not been much into politics, but your down to earth non biased recounting of these men and women has fascinated me. Thank you.
In comparison, im a politics addict as Richards would put it but i too discovered him from the 2020 issue of the same book, a very interesting set of insights
Yes - those gentlemen would be interesting. I think Tebbit would of perhaps pushed the need to row back from the social changes that were made by people like Roy Jenkins in the 1960s, if he was PM.
Although I no longer believe in the left/right paradigm, I have come to respect Benn's views a lot more of recent times. Especially with regards to being pro peace and calling out foreign interventions by the UK and the USA. I also agree with his view on leaving the EU. I think we wouldn't take the same route, but I think we both want to reach the same destination.
No he didn’t. He just wanted members of the Party To have a voice in electing their leader. MPs still voted for the leader after the reforms but along with members and Unions
@@briandelaney9710 If you have to share a decision with someone who shouldn't have a say in it, you are basically disenfranchised the former. Why should party members or even other organisations decide who should be parliamentary leader, let alone Prime Minister? The process in which the PM is chosen nowadays is seriously corrupted and unclear.
@@str.77 Because the membership is the party, not the MPs and the latter tend to be oh so easily corrupted by money and power and those friends they had at Oxbridge. You don't like that Labour became answerable to its membership, causing problems for the Blairites, that's your real issue.
@@str.77he just believed as did many others at the time , that the people who worked so hard for the Party as members should have some representation in electing the leader of their own party. Quite a modest fairness proposal really
The problem with Benn in the 70s and 80s was not that he was against the Common Market - many high profile people in the Labour party, including Callaghan, were. Nor was the problem with Benn that he wanted greater participation from the grassroots of the party. The problem was that he supported this not from any idealistic point of view - that was merely a facade - but as a means of strengthening the extreme left wing of the Labour party, knowing full well that most members of the constituency Labour parties militant left-wingers. And he almost succeeded. I recommend anyone interested in the civil war in the Labour party in the early 80s to read John Golding's "Hammer of the Left", where he describes how he and others wrestled the control of the party back from the militant left.
Anthony Wedgwood-Benn, Viscount Stansgate and 'fake leftie' (Denis Healey's words, not mine). A man who lambasted the government of Jim Callaghan but hadn't taken the only logical step, since he disagreed with it so vehemently, which would have been to have resigned from the Cabinet when he was a minister. In short a coward. A man who railed against tax avoidance but used such devices in his own estate planning for the betterment of his family and protection of their wealth. A hypocrite. And despised by much of the Labour Party.
Tony Benn's Commonwealth of Britain Bill 1991 should have got more of a mention here, it got its second reading in parliament and was a great piece of Libertarian work that showed he could still influence politics into the 90's....
Benn wasnt friends with Powell wouldn't be seen on a public platform with him during the EU referendum Benn 1st to condemn Powell after rivers of blood speech Foot was friends with Powell not Benn
Most British voters recognized Tony Benn as bat shit crazy. He immatured with age, dictating his self congratulationlately diaries where was always the hero and always right while his colleagues were wrong! It was a very lucky escape not to have Benn in No.10
@@kailashpatel1706 A good sense of humour and in some ways an effective orator and communicator...but fundamentally misguided; Tony, like Michael Foot, good in opposition, useless as a leader.
I have the highest respect for Tony Benn but I think that he had a moral blindspot: his support for Zionism and the state of Israel. Jeremy Corbyn to his credit is sympathetic to the Palestinians.
@@zachsmith5515 What could possibly be right about Zionism and the state of Israel. Have you any idea of their human rights abuses dating back for more than 70 years?
Sure Ben was a silver tongued orator but thank heavens he never got his hands on real power. If we had voted Labour in the 1983 General Election which was largely Benns manifesto, we would all be still driving Austin Allegros and waiting 6 months to have a phone installed. Thank heavens for Thatcher who RESCUED this country from oblivion.
I do think that you miss the point about Benn. He was a very good orator but the problem was; the message. Much like AH. As others have said, his insistence on full Clause 4 implementation ie taking into Public ownership the means of production, etc. etc, starting with the Banks, would have made him unelectable. It was what the public wanted to get away from in 79. His opposition to the ECC/EU may have been partly to do with the obvious lack of Democracy but the real reason was because of very strict rules over government support/ownership of businesses. ie no Nationalisation. However, the most telling thing about him was his master class in Inheritance Tax 'planning' for his multi-million pound London house and Stansgate Estate. Not to mention his arrangements for the resurrection of his title, for his eldest son. The pigs are walking upright and wearing the Farmer's clothes!
I respected him, but watching the 1975 debate with Jenkins on the EEC referendum showed he could be beaten. He would never be PM much like Foot, Kinnock or Corbyn. He was hard left.
Steve Richards has a certain so called modern left centrist view. Certainly it is difficult for a modern chancellor, saying no jam today, to gain the popularity to be PM and they were often too much in the public eye. The covid period rather shielded Sunak from clise examination. But most of the Chancellors were too narrow to be contenders. Healey was too Brutal personally and dudn't suffer fools and friends well enough. John Major was advantaged by his low profile and apparent lack of ego. He came to power unknown and apparently nothing but in some respects was competent and conventional all pkuses compared with hia main Tory rivals Butler, Hailsham and probably Carrington were disqualified by appeasement. Thatcher and Blair's militarism reflected a complete lack of knowledge of the subject and both involved the UK in serious wars due to a complete ignorance of how poorly equipped the UK was actually was to fight in the Falklands, Iraq or Afghanistan in terms of rhe UK PM who never was the most intersesting question is but for the Falklands war and the improbable success due to luck, the professionalusm of rhe remaining East of Suez officers or the talent or genius of a few maverick RN and Marine officers. Who then would have been PM in 1983/4. Whitelaw, Healey, Foot, Owen, Jenkins ??? Castle essentially took the big huts for Wilson. The chance for Wildon white heat revolution by industry, science and bofins depended on reform of the unions and wage control. Starmer will have noted. Castle, Wilson and Blair understood the voters were no longer interested in trains as did in fact Churchill and MacMillan. Boris and Cirbyn at least pretended more fashionable intersts. Both Boris and Corbyn constructed their political persona with a great deal of dishonesty and craft ( Corbyn claimed to never read books, to support Arsenal and various other barbaric working class spoets which he despised). Both Boris and Corbyn were from very established midfle class families and attracted even higher class girlfriends and wives with unusual frequency to the astonishment of theur familues. Corbyn nearly won the 2017 election and appeared like Al Gore to have done it on the night, by in corbyns case managing to obscure his fundamental Bennite Nationalist view and attract the elite Pro EEC sophisticate view, a deception possible by the luck of the moment rather similar to a certain gentleman in 1932/3 just gaining a victory in Germany
Tony Benn's moment was 1975/76 when he presented his Alternative Economic Strategy. Harold Wilson wrote "Haven't read it, don't propose to but I disagree with it." By 1980 he was swimming against the tide.
That's way, way off. He was hugely unpopular with the general public. He was pushing in a direction that the general public was desperate to get away from. The labour party would have disintegrated if he'd become leader, with huge defections to the SDP.
@@zeddeka I agree had Anthony Wedgwood Benn ie Tony Benn had become Labour Leader Labour would have been in opposition for ever and would have ended up as a minority party like The Liberals the SDP would have been the opposition
These videos are amazing.
The first time I became aware of Tony Benn was in the 1960s when he was busy putting Radio Caroline and the other offshore radio stations out of business. I was no big fan of his politics then or later, but a fascinating man to listen to whether you agreed with him or not.
Excellent reflections, and a very good impression!
Steve Richards is such a breath of fresh air in all of his analyses. His analysis especially from 19.10 on this spot on.
Finally somebody that understands Corbyn's ascent in the context of 2008 and understand success is as much as to do with the times as is it is to do with the candidate.
19:10
Well, that didn't age well
@zeddeka My assessment of Steve Richards' analysis stands despite the 2019 election
Love Steve's impersonations. Eat your heart out Rory Bremner.
Great analysis. Several years after this was posted and everything that’s happened since, I’m now reading Benn’s: “a blaze of autumn sunshine”. I highly recommend it, notably the comments/observations about Boris Johnson. Benn was a man well ahead of his time. RIP TB
Please might I ask what this book us about
Steve Richards right here to talk about how Benn's legacy is in many ways more apparent in the Conservative Party, perhaps absorbed via Benn's friendships with the likes of Enoch Powell and David Davis. The arguments he put forward for Brexit were repeated verbatim in 2016 by Tory right wingers. The internal party changes he heralded for electing leaders by the party members have been adopted by the Tories too, with the end result that a few thousand unaccountable party members gave us Liz Truss and Boris Johnson (and Corbyn for that matter). Benn's legacy really has been toxic.
Tories usually made a nationalistic argument against the EU. Benn always emphasized democracy
@@briandelaney9710 That's an odd take, because they were in essence the same thing. Margret Thatcher made precisely the same arguments about democracy as Benn did - and once she became a back bencher was often seen to nod along to his speech in parliament. David Davis has made exactly the same arguments. Jacob Reese Mogg also made the same arguments. All of them, Benn, Thatcher, David, Reese Mogg, were making the same argument. About nationalistic democracy.
There is no doubt about the sincerity of Benn just like Foot and Corbyn but the fact remains when they were at their peak Labour suffered its heaviest defeats.
Labour won two elections in 1974 on a Bennite manifesto. They lost in 79 because the party leadership had pretended that the manifesto didn't exist.
SDP did for Foot he should never of been made leader at his age Falklands war hangover was nail in his coffin
Superb piece. Benn is my political hero so this was my first watch of the series. Looking forward to the rest.
@ANTHONY burton SWP eh? - I was in Militant. That's the trouble with us Trots, too fragmented and couldn't organise the proverbial p*ss-up.
@ANTHONY burton Politically that would have given us Blairism 15 years earlier. No thanks!
@@redrobbosworkshopThank god you couldn’t organise and unite. Perpetual Tory government doesn’t bear thinking about.
Sadly this country does not have any great orators like Tony Benn and Enoch Powell
Love the impressions!
Benn's proposal for the 1975 referendum certainly didn't unite the cabinet. The likes of Roy Jenkins resigned as deputy leader, as did several others from their positions. Perhaps Barbara Castle's description of him illustrates it best: "He's like a schoolboy with a chemistry set who ends up blowing up all his mates with his experiments."
Benn was the only Labour figure to attend Powell's funeral saying when questioned why ...he was my friend"although Thatcher atestifues that she attended Eric Heffer Westminster funeral because he was "one of ours"
Tony Benn wrote in his diaries that Margaret Thatcher did attend Eric Heffer's funeral. He wrote that he found her weeping. Surprisingly, in spite of their wide political differences, there was a mutual regard between Thatcher and Heffer.
Really enjoying these, came on to them after listening to your book Prime Ministers. Not been much into politics, but your down to earth non biased recounting of these men and women has fascinated me. Thank you.
In comparison, im a politics addict as Richards would put it but i too discovered him from the 2020 issue of the same book, a very interesting set of insights
Mr. Richards is an amazing mimic!
Thoroughly enjoyable!
Would love to hear Steve Richards on the Liz Truss years.
HAH!
@@mohammedsarker5756 That would take about 5 mins! lol
"I KNOW!!" (apologies to Dead Ringers)
The programme about Rab Butler is missing from this series.
You can add three other who never became Prime Minister Enoch Powell Norman Tebitt and John Smith
True but like Hugh G, Smith was tragically deprived of the top job...
@@dlamiss How true both Hugh Gaskell and John Smith were taken far to soon and both would be great Prime Ministers and great Statesmen to
Even though my grandparents are Torys loved John Smith
Yes - those gentlemen would be interesting. I think Tebbit would of perhaps pushed the need to row back from the social changes that were made by people like Roy Jenkins in the 1960s, if he was PM.
Melissa Benn shares many of his views...
Tony was fundamentally misguided; things would have gone badly awry if he had ever become Prime Minister. A Pandora's Box but certainly disastrous.
I think that Lexit is the ultimate own goal.
Brilliant, tankz.
Although I no longer believe in the left/right paradigm, I have come to respect Benn's views a lot more of recent times. Especially with regards to being pro peace and calling out foreign interventions by the UK and the USA. I also agree with his view on leaving the EU. I think we wouldn't take the same route, but I think we both want to reach the same destination.
Prick
Did you ever think of doing one for Jo Swinson was almost Prime Minister 😂😂😂
lol you could maybe do one for clegg but i dont think swinson ever had a chance
LOL
Who?
He is so right
So it was Benn who disenfranchised Labour MPs from choosing their leader, basically making the unelected PM rven more unelected.
No he didn’t. He just wanted members of the Party
To have a voice in electing their leader. MPs still voted for the leader after the reforms but along with members and Unions
@@briandelaney9710 If you have to share a decision with someone who shouldn't have a say in it, you are basically disenfranchised the former. Why should party members or even other organisations decide who should be parliamentary leader, let alone Prime Minister?
The process in which the PM is chosen nowadays is seriously corrupted and unclear.
@@str.77because they worked to get the Party elected
@@str.77 Because the membership is the party, not the MPs and the latter tend to be oh so easily corrupted by money and power and those friends they had at Oxbridge. You don't like that Labour became answerable to its membership, causing problems for the Blairites, that's your real issue.
@@str.77he just believed as did many others at the time , that the people who worked so hard for the Party as members should have some representation in electing the leader of their own party. Quite a modest fairness proposal really
April 2025 will mark his 100th birthday
The problem with Benn in the 70s and 80s was not that he was against the Common Market - many high profile people in the Labour party, including Callaghan, were. Nor was the problem with Benn that he wanted greater participation from the grassroots of the party. The problem was that he supported this not from any idealistic point of view - that was merely a facade - but as a means of strengthening the extreme left wing of the Labour party, knowing full well that most members of the constituency Labour parties militant left-wingers. And he almost succeeded. I recommend anyone interested in the civil war in the Labour party in the early 80s to read John Golding's "Hammer of the Left", where he describes how he and others wrestled the control of the party back from the militant left.
John Golding is hardly an objective source. He was on the extreme right of the Party
@@briandelaney9710 "He was on the extreme right of the Party" i.e. a sensible man!
Toni benn the best prime minister we never had.
Hardly. He was a left-wing nutter and absolutely despised by many in the Labour party
What about Barbara Castle ???
Anthony Wedgwood-Benn, Viscount Stansgate and 'fake leftie' (Denis Healey's words, not mine). A man who lambasted the government of Jim Callaghan but hadn't taken the only logical step, since he disagreed with it so vehemently, which would have been to have resigned from the Cabinet when he was a minister. In short a coward. A man who railed against tax avoidance but used such devices in his own estate planning for the betterment of his family and protection of their wealth. A hypocrite. And despised by much of the Labour Party.
That is so biased and untrue , I don’t know quite where to begin but it does sound more like a Daily Mail headline then an argument
Which bit is untrue? Or are those things called facts a bit inconvenient for you?@@briandelaney9710
Tony Benn's Commonwealth of Britain Bill 1991 should have got more of a mention here, it got its second reading in parliament and was a great piece of Libertarian work that showed he could still influence politics into the 90's....
Why no mention of Enoch Powell and Tony Benn good friends and United against E U?
How true
Benn wasnt friends with Powell wouldn't be seen on a public platform with him during the EU referendum Benn 1st to condemn Powell after rivers of blood speech Foot was friends with Powell not Benn
Where’s the Miliband brothers upload?
Miliband of brothers
Most British voters recognized Tony Benn as bat shit crazy. He immatured with age, dictating his self congratulationlately diaries where was always the hero and always right while his colleagues were wrong! It was a very lucky escape not to have Benn in No.10
What a balanced judgement ;)
The notion that Tony Benn could have been Prime Minister warps my brain...!
Think Jeremy Corbyn with class and common sense.
The left have produced few leaders...Nye Bevin and Tony Benn stand out..
@@kailashpatel1706 A good sense of humour and in some ways an effective orator and communicator...but fundamentally misguided; Tony, like Michael Foot, good in opposition, useless as a leader.
@@richardlaversuch9460 I dont.know..I think.Benn would have been a superb labour leader..he would have been a serious opponent to Thatcher..
@@kailashpatel1706 I met Melissa Benn at writing school last Summer. She is charming too, like her dad, but equally misguided.
I have the highest respect for Tony Benn but I think that he had a moral blindspot: his support for Zionism and the state of Israel. Jeremy Corbyn to his credit is sympathetic to the Palestinians.
Tony Benn to his credit supported Zionism and the state of Israel. Corbyn to his utter disgrace doesn't and sadly supports the Palestinians.
@@zachsmith5515 What could possibly be right about Zionism and the state of Israel. Have you any idea of their human rights abuses dating back for more than 70 years?
Sure Ben was a silver tongued orator but thank heavens he never got his hands on real power. If we had voted Labour in the 1983 General Election which was largely Benns manifesto, we would all be still driving Austin Allegros and waiting 6 months to have a phone installed. Thank heavens for Thatcher who RESCUED this country from oblivion.
Britain today is a shithole, it would have been less one with Been in power.
Corbyn should have gotten an episode. 2017 was the closest election since 1974…
Only lost due to the traitors in Labour Head Office and the most partisan press of all time.
2010 Tories 308 Labour 258. 2017 Tories 317 Labour 262. therefore 2010 was closer
I do think that you miss the point about Benn. He was a very good orator but the problem was; the message. Much like AH.
As others have said, his insistence on full Clause 4 implementation ie taking into Public ownership the means of production, etc. etc, starting with the Banks, would have made him unelectable. It was what the public wanted to get away from in 79.
His opposition to the ECC/EU may have been partly to do with the obvious lack of Democracy but the real reason was because of very strict rules over government support/ownership of businesses. ie no Nationalisation.
However, the most telling thing about him was his master class in Inheritance Tax 'planning' for his multi-million pound London house and Stansgate Estate. Not to mention his arrangements for the resurrection of his title, for his eldest son.
The pigs are walking upright and wearing the Farmer's clothes!
I respected him, but watching the 1975 debate with Jenkins on the EEC referendum showed he could be beaten. He would never be PM much like Foot, Kinnock or Corbyn. He was hard left.
Steve Richards has a certain so called modern left centrist view. Certainly it is difficult for a modern chancellor, saying no jam today, to gain the popularity to be PM and they were often too much in the public eye. The covid period rather shielded Sunak from clise examination. But most of the Chancellors were too narrow to be contenders. Healey was too Brutal personally and dudn't suffer fools and friends well enough. John Major was advantaged by his low profile and apparent lack of ego. He came to power unknown and apparently nothing but in some respects was competent and conventional all pkuses compared with hia main Tory rivals Butler, Hailsham and probably Carrington were disqualified by appeasement. Thatcher and Blair's militarism reflected a complete lack of knowledge of the subject and both involved the UK in serious wars due to a complete ignorance of how poorly equipped the UK was actually was to fight in the Falklands, Iraq or Afghanistan in terms of rhe UK PM who never was the most intersesting question is but for the Falklands war and the improbable success due to luck, the professionalusm of rhe remaining East of Suez officers or the talent or genius of a few maverick RN and Marine officers. Who then would have been PM in 1983/4. Whitelaw, Healey, Foot, Owen, Jenkins ???
Castle essentially took the big huts for Wilson. The chance for Wildon white heat revolution by industry, science and bofins depended on reform of the unions and wage control. Starmer will have noted. Castle, Wilson and Blair understood the voters were no longer interested in trains as did in fact Churchill and MacMillan. Boris and Cirbyn at least pretended more fashionable intersts. Both Boris and Corbyn constructed their political persona with a great deal of dishonesty and craft ( Corbyn claimed to never read books, to support Arsenal and various other barbaric working class spoets which he despised). Both Boris and Corbyn were from very established midfle class families and attracted even higher class girlfriends and wives with unusual frequency to the astonishment of theur familues. Corbyn nearly won the 2017 election and appeared like Al Gore to have done it on the night, by in corbyns case managing to obscure his fundamental Bennite Nationalist view and attract the elite Pro EEC sophisticate view, a deception possible by the luck of the moment rather similar to a certain gentleman in 1932/3 just gaining a victory in Germany
Richards entirely miss the point even with insight. Discuss the right of my Eric CHappell
I defo think Tony Benn could have defeated Thatcher if given a chance. It would have been a very interesting election Thatcher Vs Benn.
Tony Benn's moment was 1975/76 when he presented his Alternative Economic Strategy.
Harold Wilson wrote "Haven't read it, don't propose to but I disagree with it."
By 1980 he was swimming against the tide.
The party would have split if Benn had become PM for sure. Then again the problem with Benn was that he didn't want to play the game.
That's way, way off. He was hugely unpopular with the general public. He was pushing in a direction that the general public was desperate to get away from. The labour party would have disintegrated if he'd become leader, with huge defections to the SDP.
@@zeddeka I agree had Anthony Wedgwood Benn ie Tony Benn had become Labour Leader Labour would have been in opposition for ever and would have ended up as a minority party like The Liberals the SDP would have been the opposition
@@richardsharpe2966 the labour party has not had power since 1979. every government since has been of the conservative party.
these are great but you say 'slaughtered' a lot
j.kenneth fraac
These are one take. He meant to say ‘felched’.