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Tony Benn
120 quotes
“The stars were just out and the crowd were laughing and joking but underneath it all was the tragedy of 6 million dead in the gas chambers and the miracle of a home for Jews after 1,900 years of pogrom and ghetto.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From an account of a visit to Israel for Independence Day Celebrations in April 1956, in Years of Hope: Diaries, Letters and Papers 1940-1962 (Hutchinson, 1994 [2012]), p. 261
“It is we, on this side, who object to dreams of empire, because we think in terms of free association and we believe that the empire that was built up was based on force and domination by this country.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (13 September 1956)
“There can be no greater friend of Israel in this House than I am. I say that quite sincerely. I have pressed that Israel should have arms in the present situation. I believe that if ever there was a case for it, it is today, with the massive supply of Russian war materials now going into Egypt, and that Israel should have more arms at once.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (13 September 1956)
“[T]he Treaty of Rome which entrenches laissez-faire as its philosophy and chooses Bureaucracy as its administrative method will stultify effective national economic planning without creating the necessary supranational planning mechanisms for growth and social justice under democratic control. ... [T]he political inspiration of the EEC amounts to a belief in the institutionalisation of NATO, which will harden the division of Europe and encourage the emergence of a new nuclear superpower, thus worsening East–West relations and making disarmament more difficult.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[O]n balance Britain would have far less influence on world events if she were inside [the EEC] than she could have if she remained outside.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Encounter (January 1963), quoted in Ruth Winstone (ed.), Best of Benn: Speeches, Diaries, Letters and Other Writings (Arrow, 2015), pp. 21, 22
“Even relatively benign and temporary authoritarianism that rests upon elected power is being challenged. We are moving rapidly towards a situation where the pressure for the redistribution of political power will have to be faced as a major political issue. In a world where authoritarianism of the left or right is a very real possibility, the question of whether ordinary people can govern themselves by consent is still on trial—as it always has been, and always will be. Beyond parliamentary democracy as we know it, we shall have to find a new popular democracy to replace it.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Welsh Council of Labour (25 May 1968), quoted in The Times (27 May 1968), p. 2
“The flag of racialism which has been hoisted in Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one that fluttered 25 years ago over Dachau and Belsen.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Students for a Labour Victory rally, referring to Enoch Powell who was MP for Wolverhampton South West, Methodist Central Hall, London (3 June 1970), as quoted in "Onslaught on Powell by Wedgwood Benn" by Deni…
“Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In New Politics (1970)
“Workers now have, through interdependence, enormous negative power to dislocate the system. Workers' control—if it means the power to plan their own work and to hire and fire the immediate plant management just as M.P.s are now hired and fired by the voters—converts that existing negative power into positive and constructive power. It thus creates the basis of common interest with local managers struggling to make a success of the business and to get devolved authority from an over-centralized bureaucratic board of management now perhaps sitting on them from above.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Towards workers' control', The Times (5 September 1970), p. 12
“We want industry to be in the public sector, to change the power structure of our society...We have not yet carved out of public enterprise a wide enough area of management decision which ought properly to be brought within the ambit of the workers themselves.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Brighton (6 October 1971)
“[M]en who would rather go to jail than betray what they believe to be their duty to their fellow workers and the principles which they hold.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From an issued statement from Mr. Benn on five dockers imprisoned for contempt of court (21 July 1972), cited in Jad Adams Tony Benn: A Biography (2011 ed.) p. 9
“Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (2 October 1972); Labour Party Annual Conference Report (1972), p. 103
“I sometimes wish the trade unionists who work in the mass media, those who are writers and broadcasters and secretaries and printers and lift operators of Thomson House would remember that they too are members of our working class movement and have a responsibility to see that what is said about us is true.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chairman's closing address to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (6 October 1972); Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1972, p. 349
“[The Conservatives' Industry Act contains] the most comprehensive armoury of government control that has ever been assembled for use over private industry, far exceeding all the powers thought necessary by the last Labour government...Heath has performed a very important historical role in preparing for the fundamental and irreversible transfer in the balance of power and wealth which has to take place...The whole nature of the mixed economy operating on market forces has been transformed by this quiet revolution in a way that is not yet fully appreciated.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Heath's spadework for socialism', The Sunday Times (25 March 1973), p. 61
“The 1973 Labour Conference will have before it the most radical programme the Party has prepared since 1945.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'More equality and more democracy', The Times (1 October 1973), p. 16
“The [pay] policy is principally designed to hold down wages rather than to check inflation. Inflation is being used as an excuse to destroy free trade union bargaining.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (7 November 1973)
“The fines on the engineering union and the heavy damages that may be levied against the transport union go well beyond questions of economic policy and strike at the roots of free trade unionism. Conscientious objection to the law is not a criminal act. It is not the same as an attempt to overturn the Government and set up a new one, without elections, by the direct use of industrial strength.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Wells, Somerset (23 November 1973) on Hugh Scanlon's union's rejection of the Industrial Relations Act, quoted in The Times (24 November 1973), p. 2
“It takes powers which are permanent—this is not a temporary provisions Bill—and cover all fuels. I welcome the Bill because it will enable a Labour Government to do all they want under Labour's programme for Britain...It will give us the power to control all the oil companies, all the multi-nationals, to fix their prices and their distribution systems; and under these powers every other fuel and its use, including the chemical industry, will be brought within the control of the Government of the day. This will include road transport and private transport.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (26 November 1973) on the Conservatives' Fuel and Electricity (Control) Bill
“[Edward Heath], who sold out Britain's interests to the Common Market and gave our sovereignty away without our consent—with support of Mr Thorpe and the Liberals—is not entitled to wave the Union Jack to get himself out of the mess.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Bristol (30 November, 1973), quoted in ' 'Democracy in danger' warning by Mr Benn', The Times (1 December, 1973), pp. 1-2
“In developing our industrial strategy for the period ahead, we have the benefit of much experience. Almost everything has been tried at least once...The one constant element throughout this long history of policy has been the fact that these alternatives have been largely centrally decided and imposed and have been seen as problems of economics and management rather than as problems of politics and consent...Any constructive long-term industrial strategy must be developed by the longer, slower route of real consultation and power sharing, all done more openly. There is no alternative.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (13 March 1974)
“What we lack in Government is entrepreneurial ability.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in London (6 June 1974)
“This huge Commission building in Brussels, in the shape of a cross, is absolutely un-British. I felt as if I were going as a slave to Rome; the whole relationship was wrong. Here was I, an elected man who could be removed, doing a job, and here were these people with more power than I had and no accountability to anybody...My visit confirmed in a practical way all my suspicions that this would be the decapitation of British democracy without any countervailing advantage, and the British people, quite rightly, wouldn't accept it. There is no real benefit for Britain.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (18 June 1974), quoted from Against the Tide. Diaries 1973-1976 (London: Hutchinson, 1989), pp. 180–182
“Britain's continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation and the end of our democratically elected Parliament as the supreme law making body in the United Kingdom.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Bristol constituents (29 December 1974), reprinted in Tony Benn, 'The Common Market: Loss of Self-Government', in M. Holmes (ed.), The Eurosceptical Reader (Springer, 2016), p. 38
“If I had rescued a child from drowning, the national press would no doubt have headlined the story “Benn grabs child.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to the National Executive Committee (26 February 1975), quoted in The Times (27 February 1975), p. 3 and The Times (28 June 1999), p. 3
“Through me the energy policy of the whole Common Market is being held up. Without opening old wounds, it pleases me no end.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On not attending an EEC meeting in order to attend a Labour rally (12 December 1975), quoted in 'Mr Benn delays EEC meeting', The Times (13 December, 1975), p. 1
“When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Independent Radio News (12 November 1976), quoted in The Times (13 November 1976), p. 2
“Anyone from abroad will tell you that it is the class system that really lies at the root of our problems, economic and industrial. The House of Lords symbolises that.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Yorkshire Post (22 November 1976)
“It is an indisputable historical fact...that Marxism has, from the earliest days, always been openly accepted by the party as one of many sources of inspiration within our movement, along with—though much less influential than—Christian Socialism, Fabianism, Owenism, trade unionism, or even radical Liberalism. Marxism is not synonymous with communism and it is not true that there is growing up in the Labour Party a dominant group which believes in violent revolution, the one-party state and suppression of democratic rights.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement for Labour's National Executive Committee in defence of Andy Bevan, a Marxist who had been appointed Labour's National Youth Officer, quoted in The Times (16 December 1976), p. 14
“[T]he Opposition [Conservative Party] have consistently resisted, from the time when they were in office until now, any extension of British control over oil in the North Sea. ... The development of the North Sea is going on apace. But we believe that it is right that the British people should have a growing share in the benefits of the North Sea. ... It passes my understanding why a party which used to pretend to speak for the national interest should regularly denounce any extension of British control and ownership of the oil in the continental shelf.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (5 April 1978)
“More and more communists are coming to realize that socialism without democracy is no socialism at all. ... I believe that the next decade will see the growth in democratic socialism against the ideas of monetarism and corporation.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the European Republic Committee at the American Club in London (25 October 1978), quoted in The Times (26 October 1978), p. 5
“I think that having 24 people around the Cabinet table whose future depends upon maintaining the good will of one man is fundamentally undemocratic and it would be far better if Cabinet ministers were accountable to the Parliamentary Labour Party.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview for London Weekend Television's Weekend World, quoted in The Times (11 February 1980), p. 2
“[T]he Party must have a much wider appeal. We have thought of the Party a bit narrowly, in terms of economic and industrial policy, as if every problem could be solved by setting up a quango. We have got to think of the appeal to women, to blacks, to the wider peace movement, the ecological movement and the regions. We have got to think out the whole devolution argument... You and I come from old-fashioned radical liberal families, and libertarianism is what it is about.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to Michael Foot (18 November 1980), quoted in Tony Benn, The End of An Era: Diaries, 1980–90, ed. Ruth Winstone (1992), p. 49
“People who have 'come out' in the last two or three years by their own action make themselves vulnerable in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion caused by rising unemployment... The present inequality relating among other things to the definition of privacy, the differing ages of consent, the exclusion of the Armed Services and the Merchant Navy cannot be justified and must be completely swept away from the statute books.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the launching of the National Council for Civil Liberties' booklet Gay Workers: Trade Unions and the Law (27 January 1981), quoted in The Times (28 January 1981), p. 4
“Those who argue that constitutional questions such as party democracy are irrelevant top the political struggle against Mrs Thatcher's Government are misreading the whole history of our movement. If constitutional issues are irrelevant, why did the Chartists have to fight so hard in the nineteenth century? Were the twentieth century suffragettes engaged in irrelevant activity when they were fighting for the vote? Constitutional questions are the key to power in a parliamentary democracy and have played a crucial role in the development of our movement.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Extract from Arguments from Democracy (Jonathan Cape, 1981), as cited in "Benn: how the workers can enter into their rightful inheritance", The Times (10 September 1981), p. 14
“The Poles have had the courage to stand up to the Kremlin. The British people must now stand up to the Pentagon and close all their nuclear bases here.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to a CND rally (24 October 1981), quoted in Jad Adams, Tony Benn (Macmillan, 1992), p. 420
“[Journalists tell me:] "I didn't write the headline; the editor told me to say that. I will lose my job if I put it differently". But journalists were not exempted from what was happening in society. Their role could be likened to the Jews in Dachau who herded other Jews into the gas chambers.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the press (26 January 1982), quoted in The Times (27 January 1982), p. 1
“It is wholly wrong to blame Marx for what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in his,”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Benn Heresy (1982).
“I do not think we have a free press in Britain today. There is not a single newspaper that I can buy, not one in Britain that reflects my political position. And The Times, dare I say to you, is really disreputable. It does not print truthfully and faithfully what happens and it pretends, because it is printed in small print that it is above argument. But it is a political propaganda instrument like The Sun, but it is printed in rather better print and rather shrewder language.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Press conference in Athens (12 March 1982), quoted in The Times (13 March 1982), p. 5
“I tell the Prime Minister that this is an ill-thought-out enterprise and will not achieve the purposes to which it is put.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (7 April 1982) on the Falklands War
“When it comes to it, we shall have to make sovereignty negotiable, either by ceding it to the United Nations or arranging a transfer in some other way... Do not use that as an excuse for war. We cannot kill for flags today.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (29 April 1982) on the Falklands War
“He (John Ball) was preaching socialism long before Marx, Stalin or Brezhnev. He said things would not go well for England until all property was held in common. He was hanged, they cut his stomach out and he was drawn and quartered, his body cut into four pieces. That was the way they treated the Militant Tendency in 1381.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech during the Mitcham and Morden by-election, quoted in The Times (3 June 1982), p. 12
“Establishment necessarily involves a subtle corruption of the spirit of the church because it is safely embedded in the wider establishment of society, which includes the privileged and the powerful... How can those Christians who see monetarism being so cruelly applied to the old, the sick, the homeless, women, the black community, and the young unemployed, lead a struggle against this injustice from within an established church subject to a Cabinet and a parliamentary majority composed of those very people who are responsible for implementing those very policies?”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to St James's Church, Piccadilly (2 March 1983), quoted in The Times (3 March 1983), p. 14
“The general election of 1983 has produced one important result that has passed virtually without comment in the media. It is that, for the first time since 1945, a political party with an openly socialist policy has received the support of over eight and a half million people. This is a remarkable development by any standards and it deserves some analysis.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he 1983 Labour manifesto commanded the loyalty of millions of voters and a democratic socialist bridge-head in public understanding and support can be made.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Spirit of Labour Reborn", The Guardian (20 June 1983), p. 9.
“We are socialists because we believe that these rights cannot be fully realised in any society under capitalism, which, as in Britain now, has entrenched by law, the power of Capital over Labour, and subordinated human values to the demand for profit, at the expense of social justice and peace.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Excerpt from a draft socialist manifesto Benn submitted to the Labour National Executive Committee in 1987. The rights Benn was referring to were one he laid out in the draft manifesto he submitted, such as the “right t…
“People say that if we work for the Single European Act, women will get their rights, the water will be purer, and training will be better. That is rubbish. It is part of the attempt to consolidate the EEC.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the House of Commons (23 February 1989)
“I suppose I ought to put my reflections down. It was a remarkable two days. The NEC has abandoned socialist aspirations and any idea of transforming society; it has accepted the main principles not only of capitalism but of Thatcherism, and it thinks that now the Party has a chance of winning office.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a diary entry (9 May 1989), as cited in The Benn Diaries 1940–1990 (Arrow, [1995] 1996), p. 628
“All war represents a failure of diplomacy.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (28 February 1991)
“I’ve been in Parliament for forty-one years. I’ve been in the Soviet Union many, many times, to Moscow, and I love it; but I hope you will not equate democracy with capitalism, because capitalism imposes great hardship on people.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capitalism and British imperialism have exploited the world; and what I fear is that the only form of capitalism you could have would be a military form of capitalism, like Pinochet’s in Chile.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Excerpts from a diary entry (29 October 1991), as cited in TONY BENN Free at Last! Diaries 1991 -2001 Edited by Ruth Winstone, Published by Arrow Books in 2003, p. 54. These were points that Benn made during a conversat…