When
Kenny Everett chanted a little ditty of a poem about Margaret
Thatcher I remember the words 'you will vote for her again/cos you
won't vote for Tony Benn; and now he is dead.
He
was an intellectual of the highest order, make no mistake, and an
aristocrat to boot; for those that don't know this, he renounced his
title so he could become an MP; he was a good MP for 50 years or so
and when he retired, mainly because of his wife's illness, he said he
was retiring to concentrate on politics.
A
lot of people didn't like him – they hadn't met him, by the way –
but it would be his politics that people didn't like. He was a
socialist and because he was a committed socialist and a conviction
politician he didn't stand a chance.
People
would steal things from his garbage to see what they could get on
him but they didn't find much.
In
the Wilson Government of the sixties he was the technology wizz kid
and during all those years he dictated a diary – he espoused none
personality politics but his diaries reveal lots of personalities
and big names.
He
was a war time pilot in the RAF and his brother was killed in the
same campaign; he went from Viscount Stansgate, to Anthony Neil
Wedgwood-Benn and finally to Tony Benn – he wanted to be as 'common
as muck' but if you look at some of the photos of him as a young man
he looks like an upper class twit.
Look
at this:
An
amusing fact I found here - His great-uncle,
the Rev Julius Benn, was murdered with a chamber pot by his son, who
on release from Broadmoor fathered the actress Margaret Rutherford.
No matter how much controversy he
created or how much trouble he might have caused, if he was ever at a
party children gathered around him; children from babes in arms to
teenagers. Even children who were only children at heart would gather
around to listen to his stories and in his later years he actually
toured a 'one man show.'
His failures in trying to spread his
ideas to everybody, his trying to influence the Labour Party were
probably our failures. We were probably worried about him trying to
take our posh houses away or taking our posh cars or our rights but
you know . . we don't have any rights.
In Britain (believe this America) we
have to pay our cell phone (mobile) companies to use an 800 number,
have to pay premium rates to vote for a contestant on a TV show and
lots of other diabolical liberties so what were we worried about?
Well Chris, you was going along quite nicely, nothing controversial, until you mentioned paying for certain land-line numbers when dialed on our mobile [cell] phones. Do you know the biggest investors in 0845 etc numbers in the the UK are? HM Government. Where are you now, Citizen Smith, when we need you? POWER TO THE PEOPLE
ReplyDeleteWell I did guess that and without being too controversial, all the government departments - tax, power, post office, railways and most big companies have 800 numbers and you can dial these from a cell phone free. You can also dial cell phone numbers from a land line at the same rate as any other line; I mean which country is supposed to be the 'nanny state?'
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