R.I.P Tony Benn

Rest in peace great man.

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party politician who was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 50 years and a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.
Benn's campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963.[2] In the Labour Government of 1964–1970 he served first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as a notably "technocratic" Minister of Technology. In the period when the Labour Party was in Opposition, for a year he was the Chairman of the Labour Party. In the Labour Government of 1974–1979 he returned to the Cabinet, initially as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy, retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister. During the Labour Party's time in Opposition during the 1980s, he was seen as the party's prominent figure on the left, and the term "Bennite" has come to be used in Britain for someone of a more radical left-wing position.[3]

Benn topped several polls as the most popular politician in Britain.[4] He has been described as "one of the few UK politicians to have become more left-wing after holding ministerial office."[5] After leaving Parliament, Benn became involved in the grass-roots politics of demonstrations and meetings, and was the President of the Stop the War Coalition for the last decade. He was a vegetarian from the 1970s until his death.

He stuck to his beliefs apparently all through his career and wouldn't budge and you would have to admire that.......Did he give up a seat in the House of Lords too......??
 
Too left wing for me but an earnest campaigner and one "tragically" of a dying breed of politicians that are interested in helping other people rather than their own gain.......
 
RIP.......Enjoy your rest...You deserve it !!

RIP Tony Benn.

Please can you avoid discussing politics, I have edited the last post to make it about the man rather than the poitics around him.

RIP Tony Benn.

Always came across as a decent human being and his voice of reason will be missed.

One phrase Tony Benn said that summed him up perfectly was whe he gave up his seat in the house of commons he said he was doing it in order to 'to spend more time on politics'.

Great man.

RIP

Can't say I'm shedding too many tears for this one, either.

I extend my sympathies to his family, though.

Tony Benn was a rarity in the House of Commons.... a decent, hardworking politician who put his constituents first, was true to his principles and genuinely believed that politics was about serving the people.

I loved his remark when he decided not to stand for re-election: "I'm giving up the House of Commons to devote more time to politics."

I disagreed with his stance on the armed forces, but respected his unwavering commitment to what he believed in.

Whether you agreed with his politics or not, he was one of the few politicians of recent(ish) times who I felt was honest and genuinely believed what he was saying - oddly, I would put Norman Tebbitt, almost Benn's polar opposite in political terms, into the same category.

Not a good week for lefties though, with Bob Crow and Tony Benn both passing. I will say though I have more sympathy for the latter than the former.

We could do with more of his kind, he saw the danger.

Benn wrote that he "loathed" the EEC; he claimed it was "bureaucratic and centralised" and "of course it is really dominated by Germany."