Diaries: More Time for Politics: Diaries 2001-2007 By Tony Benn Selected and edited by Ruth Winstone, Hutchinson, 368pp. £20Tony Benn, a controversial, popular political figure in Britain, spent 50 years in the House of Commons until 2001. He is a member of an eminent political family.
His father, originally a Liberal MP, was a member of the government in 1914 and later was secretary of state for India, in the 1930s, after he joined the Labour Party in the 1920s.
Tony Benn was first elected for Bristol South East in 1950, but he was forced to leave the Commons when he inherited the title after his father, Viscount Stansgate, died in 1960. He fought this unwanted ennoblement, making history by getting the law changed so that a person could renounce an inherited peerage.
He was a cabinet minister for 11 years in a number of different government departments. He claimed that his experience in office had driven him to the Left in Labour politics. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he was the leader of the "Bennite" faction arguing for Britain to leave the Europe Union, to abolish the House of Lords, to nationalise large sections of industry, and to introduce a system of industrial democracy to manage the economy.
He lost out in various leadership contests within the Labour Party, but remains immensely popular among the rank-and-file members, despite their clear preference for the modernism of Blair and Brown.
Benn has kept a diary since 1940. This is his eighth diary to be published. Starting in June 2001 we meet a man in his late 70s, who lost his wife Caroline a year earlier after 51 years of marriage. He is lonely without her, yet surrounded by friends and a supportive family. Benn dictates his diary, which is transcribed, edited and selected by Ruth Winstone. In his foreword, Benn gives her a warm and generous compliment which she most certainly deserves.
THE BOOK, WHICH is a pleasure to read, reveals the routine of a political figure immensely active in public affairs. Meetings, lectures, press, radio and television interviews make the life of a retired MP much busier than an elected parliamentarian. Benn returns frequently to Westminster, where he meets and talks with many former colleagues as well as sitting in the gallery to listen to important debates.
The war in Iraq dominates this diary, and his disdain for Tony Blair's duplicity in misleading Britain into war is matched by his activism against the war outside parliament. Throughout all the political entries the diary reveals, with a degree of charm, his personal problems. The plumbing in his home does not work, he can't get his computer to function, he runs out of food and needs to go shopping. The daily details of everyday life are interspersed with major events like going to interview Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or his countrywide lecture tour. His family is both enjoyable and a great source of pride. During the period of this diary his son Hilary, elected in 1999, enters government, and by 2007 he is a cabinet minister and part of a unique political dynasty of three generations of Labour cabinet ministers.
He takes a great delight in meeting with a wide range of politicians, journalists, artists and international figures. His commitment to human rights, social progress and democratic development is in stark contrast to his economic illiteracy. He has a passionate disdain for the European Union as well as and a woeful ignorance of the social and environmental progress that it has achieved.
He emerges to me as a "Little Englander" who rejects the empire but repudiates a European future for Britain while denouncing, repeatedly, Blair's subservience to the White House and Bush.
HIS BLIND FAITH in the United Nations as an alternative location of international politics seems not to recognise the veto the US, China and Russia have within the Security Council.
But his charisma, energy, moral values and commitment shine through all of this. He mentions the second World War frequently, including the death in action of his eldest brother, Michael, and it's important to recognise the enormous impact of that war on him and his entire generation.
The diary ends with Tony Blair's departure and the arrival of Gordon Brown. The war in Iraq is the constant backdrop to this diary.
Harold Wilson was once famously quoted as saying that Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as he was originally known, disimproved with age. Reading his diary, I do not agree. Tony Benn reveals himself to a be a caring, vulnerable human being with a vibrant spirit and a set of coherent and well-defined values which he lives to the full with great energy and a sense of fun.
Ruairi Quinn TD is the Labour Deputy for Dublin South-East since 1977. A former party leader and minister for finance, he is treasurer of the Party of European Socialists and Labour's spokesperson for education and science in Dáil Éireann