Dare to Be a Daniel

by Tony Benn

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Tony Benn

  Title Page

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgements

  Part One: My Faith

  Honest Doubt

  Part Two: Then

  1. Family Tree

  2. My Parents

  3. Life at Home

  4. Growing Up

  5. Michael, David and Jeremy

  6. How I Became a Philistine!

  7. The Outbreak of War

  8. From Oxford to the RAF

  9. Caroline

  Part Three: Now: Essays and Speeches

  Introduction

  1. The Reality of Parliament

  2. Whitehall Behind Closed Doors

  3. The New Roman Empire

  4. A New Foreign and Defence Policy

  5. Peace

  6. Justice

  7. Democracy

  8. Socialism

  Picture Section

  Copyright

  About the Book

  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, who was elected as a Liberal MP in 1906 and later served in Labour Cabinets under Ramsay MacDonald and Clem Atlee. 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 war with its disruption and family loss; and describes his emergence from the war 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.

  About the Author

  Tony Benn was first elected to the House of Commons in 1950 and retired in 2001 ‘to devote more time to politics’. He is the longest serving Labour MP of all time and has held senior Cabinet and party posts. In 2002, the year after his retirement, he was voted Politician of the Year by Channel 4 viewers.

  He is the author of many books, including his powerful case for constitutional change, Common Sense (with Andrew Hood), Arguments for Socialism, Arguments for Democracy and eight volumes of diaries.

  Tony Benn has four children and ten grandchildren. He was married for 51 years to Caroline, socialist, teacher and author, who died in 2000.

  Also by Tony Benn

  The Regeneration of Britain

  Speeches

  Arguments for Socialism

  Arguments for Democracy

  Parliament, People and Power

  The Sizewell Syndrome

  Fighting Back: Speaking Out for Socialism in the Eighties

  A Future for Socialism

  Common Sense (with Andrew Hood)

  Free Radical: New Century Essays

  Years of Hope: Diaries 1940–1962

  Out of the Wilderness: Diaries 1963–1967

  Office Without Power: Diaries 1968–1972

  Against the Tide: Diaries 1973–1976

  Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–1980

  The End of an Era: Diaries 1980–1990

  The Benn Diaries: Single Volume Edition 1940–1990

  Free at Last!: Diaries 1991–2001

  DARE TO BE A DANIEL

  THEN AND NOW

  TONY BENN

  Edited by Ruth Winstone

  Illustrations

  1. Great grandfather Julius Benn

  2. Electric tramlines on Victoria Embankment

  3. Grandfather John Benn reviewing the London Fire Brigade

  4. Portrait of John Benn

  5. Father in Alexandria 1946

  6. Great grandfather Eadie

  7. David Lloyd George (Getty Images)

  8. Grandfather Holmes

  9. Mother as President of Congregational Federation

  10. Terrace of House of Commons 1913

  11. 40 Grosvenor Road

  12. Benn Brothers at the seaside

  13. Stansgate in 1899

  14. Stansgate in 2004

  15. Family on beach 1929

  16. Cousin Margaret (Rutherford) (Getty Images)

  17. David as a busman

  18. TB at Gladstone’s school

  19. Oswald Mosley (Corbis)

  20. TB as scout and at Scout Camp

  21. Nurse Olive Winch with David

  22. Grandparents with David

  23. TB aged 6

  24. TB and Uncle Ernest at chess

  25. The Ragamuffins

  26. Family sailing

  27. Mother and Father at Stansgate

  28. Boys with Olive Winch

  29. Benns on active service 1940

  30. Westminster School bombed 1941

  31. Family photo 1943

  32. TB as Private, Pilot Officer and Sub-Lieutenant 1942–45

  33. Fairchild Cornell and Airspeed Oxford planes

  34. ‘Wings’ parade

  35. TB meets Caroline 1948

  36. Caroline and Tony Crosland

  37. TB and Caroline at Stansgate

  38. Caroline on car

  39. Caroline on day of wedding 1949

  40. Beautiful bride

  41. Nurse Olive with Stephen

  42. The family in Cincinnati 1959

  43. The special bench 1979

  44. Caroline’s gravestone at Stansgate

  45. TB and Speaker Martin 2001

  46. Family photo 2003

  Unless otherwise attributed, all the photographs are from the author’s collection

  Acknowledgements

  Writing this account of the influences, incidents and events which shaped my early childhood and growing up has been a challenging experience. It has allowed me to recall a comfortable but austere world in which my family was rooted in dissenting non-conformity, radicalism and commercially successful Victorian enterprise. But in the background was an awareness, while I was still a small child, of international danger looming.

  The book serves as a prelude to the eight volumes of published diaries which together cover my life as I approach eighty. It was my son Joshua who first suggested that it should be written, proposing The Weetabix Years as a title because it conveyed the idea of a happy family at breakfast.

  This became the working title and I wrote to the Chairman of Weetabix for his agreement; Sir Richard George replied to reassure me on that point but felt he ought to tell me that Weetabix was not available when I was born.

  ‘Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone’ was the advice my dad gave me and was a phrase that greatly influenced my life, and it became the title.

  The book owes much to Ruth Winstone, the editor of all the volumes of my diaries. I merely provided the raw material. She cross-examined me on it, clarified the ideas, and tried to unravel family anecdotes, myths and relationships. Working with her has been a real pleasure over the course of nearly twenty years. Jessie Fenn worked on the first draft with good humour, and Mandy Greenfield and Mary Chamberlain helped greatly on the manuscript, copy-editing and proof-reading with care and attention to detail.

  I must also thank my brother David and his wife June. David’s phenomenal memory has provided missing dates and incidents, and June, as a writer, provided valuable guidance on structure and content. To my own family I owe a great debt for their unending love, support and advice, the more so since my wif
e, Caroline, died in 2000.

  Tony Whittome of Hutchinson has devoted much of his own time to this book and indeed my publishers have become good friends, in particular Emma Mitchell, my publicity ‘minder’ who has guided me through the mysteries of the literary world.

  Tony Benn

  June 2004

  Part One

  My Faith

  Honest Doubt

  I WAS BORN in 1925 into an Edwardian household influenced by Victorian values. Although I enjoyed a degree of security and privilege denied to most people, I was also the child of radical, non-conformist parents, and life at home was shaped by a tradition of austerity lightened by my father’s sense of fun. Writing this book about my childhood, and its domestic, family and political events and experiences, has led me to examine how these elements combined during my growing up in the inter-war years to determine my character and beliefs.

  The discipline of recalling childhood events and memories, and the origins and development of my own faith, has also helped me to analyse more specifically than ever before the nature of my belief, and why and how my views have developed over the years.

  One of the most significant aspects of my childhood was my mother’s deep Christian convictions, which she hoped her children would share, and I often forget that few people now have a biblical background or knowledge of the different Christian traditions. Biblical and religious references that slip into my speeches and articles are not necessarily always understood.

  Leaving the moral teaching and theology aside, the one characteristic of most religions when they become established – and certainly of Christianity – is the entrenchment of authority at their heart, with the Pope at the centre of the Roman Catholic Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury at the heart of the Anglican community, each in their time having great power over their respective churches and enforcing the Christian doctrine, sometimes ruthlessly, as at the time of the Inquisition and on other occasions when heretics were burned at the stake.

  This authoritarianism, and the hierarchy that supports it, seems to be inherent in any faith when it develops in an organised form. The Stalinist dictatorship in Russia showed that this characteristic is not confined to religion, but can apply to other belief systems as well – in the case of the Soviet Union, supposedly the teachings of Marx.

  The Labour Party itself, which was inspired by men and women of principle, became corrupted by the same power structures, leading to the expulsion of difficult people on the grounds that they were not prepared to accept orders from the Party hierarchy; sectarian socialists can also develop in a way that discourages and represses dissent, just like religious sects forever fighting each other.

  This attempt to control what people think and say has been – and still may be – so oppressive and brutal that inevitably there have always been individuals who rebelled against it and argued that they had the right to think for themselves. Such people were generally excommunicated, expelled or even hanged, and therefore few of them ever had any political power; but they had huge influence. The teachers who explained the world without wanting to control it themselves have always played an important part in the development of ideas.

  Indeed, my mother, when she read me Bible stories, always distinguished between the kings of Israel who exercised power and the prophets of Israel who preached righteousness, and I was brought up to believe in the prophets rather than the kings.

  This dissenting tradition lies at the root of Congregationalism, in which my father had been brought up as a child and which my mother adopted after rejecting the Church of England, with its discrimination against women.

  Dissenters think for themselves and claim the right to do so, even in matters of faith. The ‘priesthood of all believers’ is based on the belief that every person has a direct line to the Almighty and does not require a bishop to mediate concerning what to believe and what to do.

  This of course was, and remains, a completely revolutionary doctrine because it undermined authority, disturbed the hierarchy and was seen as intolerable by the powers that be, in exactly the same way that, today, political dissenters are projected as troublemakers and members of the ‘awkward squad’, whose advice would lead to chaos. The fact that dissenters may be right is ignored, although history often shows that their views may turn out to be the conventional wisdom of the generation that follows them.

  Since the control of people’s minds is even more important than the physical control of society by the use of police and military repression, those who challenge the ideas that are being imposed are seen as a threat in political as in religious matters. During the Stalinist period, Soviet dissidents were treated very harshly by the Kremlin, but were of course welcomed by the anti-communist world, which hailed them – not necessarily because of agreement with what they said, but because their ideas were seen to be destabilising the enemy during the Cold War.

  As I get older, I realise that the right to think for yourself and say what you think is an integral part of the renewal of all systems. It gives those who are victims of those systems some hope that there is a better way of running the world.

  Though my father was in no sense a ‘pious’ man, he was a dissenter and the one characteristic that illuminated his life was his support for the underdog and a passionate commitment to freedom, justice, independence and democracy, a commitment that he must have inherited from his family, notably his grandfather Julius Benn, who was a Congregationalist minister.

  Julius set up a refuge for destitute boys, in a disused rope factory in the East End of London, in the course of trying to reflect that passion for justice in a practical way. When Charles Dickens visited the hostel, he said of Julius, ‘One could see by the expression of this man’s eye and by his kindly face that Love ruled rather than Fear, and that Love was triumphant.’

  Julius’s son John (my grandfather) interpreted that commitment by political work and, as a founder member of the London County Council, contributed towards the development of municipal socialism, which enormously improved the prospects of people in London at a time when education and health were run by a series of unaccountable, corrupt boards.

  As a Member of Parliament representing an East End constituency, my own father, William, was deeply involved with the Trades Council in its struggles for justice, and he always saw his role there as being pastoral in character.

  My mother, Margaret, joined the Labour Party at the same time as my father, but confined her work to the elimination of injustice within the Church, especially in arguing for the rights of women, in seeking to eliminate anti-Semitism and in maintaining the principle that chapels should elect their own ministers and not have them imposed from above. But she was not so directly concerned with other forms of social injustice.

  Indeed, there are two ways of looking at the moral responsibility that the dissenting tradition imposes. One is the charitable approach, whereby those who are better off assist the poor and devote themselves to that work wholeheartedly and sincerely. The other is one that attempts to tackle these same problems politically, by identifying the causes of poverty and trying to correct them through institutional and political changes that bring about a better state of affairs.

  Historically those who complained of the injustice of the world would be assured by their Church that they would get their reward ‘in heaven’. This, though very welcome, led some people to respond by asking why they could not have their reward while they were still alive!

  The idea of Heaven on Earth – or justice in practice – was an integral part of the dissenting tradition and of the trade-union movement, which recognised that you could only improve conditions by your own collective efforts; and the Christian tradition in socialist thinking was combined with the strength of the trade unions.

  Having been protected throughout my life from any direct experience of poverty, and having been to schools where this did not touch on any of the families, I came to understand trade unionism and socialism by experience
during the war and, afterwards, as an active constituency Member of Parliament. It was only through those experiences that I came to see the importance of what I had been taught as a child in a rather theoretical way – independence of mind.

  The first example in my own life of swimming against the political current of the time occurred in respect to appeasement. The boys at school, with one or two exceptions, supported Neville Chamberlain, and earlier were very sympathetic to Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Because of what I had heard at home, I was resolutely opposed to appeasement and argued the evils of fascism, of which I had very little knowledge although, as a boy of ten, I did see Oswald Mosley, a one-time colleague of my father in the Parliamentary Labour Party, marching through Parliament Square with his men in black shirts. And I was with my dad, in my early teens, when he addressed a meeting in the East End that was attacked by the Blackshirts and we had to leave the stage in a hurry.

  The second example of conventional wisdom that I came to question was during the war itself, when it was quite obvious that there were two wars going on at the same time, which – although they coalesced in the desire for victory – were differently motivated.

  The motivation of the British establishment in the 1930s was to thwart the spectre of communism in Britain and Europe. However, during the war, the Left thought it was fighting fascism and did not see the conflict in national terms; after all, there were many Germans fighting fascism in their own country who were our natural allies.

  We now know that there was a debate going on in the government right up until the spring of 1940, considering the possibility of a deal with Hitler. The arrival of Rudolf Hess in May 1941 was obviously a last-minute attempt by Hitler to win over British support for his attack on the Soviet Union. At that time Senator Harry Truman (later President) made a statement that if the Russians seemed to be winning, we should support the Germans; and if the Germans seemed to be winning, we should support the Russians – in the hope that as many as possible would kill each other.

  Right up to the end of the war Hitler was telling his own people that the Nazis were fighting communism.