“Benn was representative of a rare phenomenon: a conviction politician. Who meant what he said and said what he meant.
Rarer still, he was an English politician who understood Ireland. Or rather, an English politician who understood enough of Ireland to know that English politicians didn’t understand Ireland.”
This week marks 100 years since the birth of Tony Benn. Joe Dwyer writes on how Benn’s politics developed in relation to Ireland, and his own memories of discovering Benn and his work.
A century ago – on 3 April 1925 – in Westminster, London, Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn was born. Over the course of his 88 years, he would come to be popularly known as just simply: Tony Benn.
I first discovered Tony Benn in my early teens. With the steady deterioration of Gordon Brown’s Premiership and the near certainty that the Conservatives would soon return to power; I had become increasingly interested in day-to-day politics.
I can vividly recall my Mum saying to me, “Well, if you’re serious about this, you should probably read Tony Benn.” Being the precocious teen that I was, I called into a local charity bookshop and picked up a copy of Benn’s 1991-2001 Diaries ‘Free At Last!’
Needless to say, I was hooked. In little time, I had consumed his full catalogue of writings. In an age of New Labour and Cameron’s Tories, Benn was representative of a rare phenomenon: a conviction politician. Who meant what he said and said what he meant.
Rarer still, he was an English politician who understood Ireland. Or rather, an English politician who understood enough of Ireland to know that English politicians did not understand Ireland – as well as Irish politicians did – and, consequently, shouldn’t interfere in Irish affairs.
Often mischaracterised as a quintessential product of the British aristocracy, Tony Benn was actually firmly rooted in England’s radical dissenter tradition of non-conformist Christianity. As a young boy, at his Mother’s knee, he had learnt the Bible stories that pitted the Kings, who had power, against the Prophets, who taught righteousness. Benn had been taught that he should side with the Prophets and not the Kings.
The Benn family was steeped in the radical liberal tradition of British politics. His grandfather, Sir John Benn, had been a passionate advocate for Irish Home Rule; standing as the MP for St George’s in Wapping, in 1892, on an avowedly pro-Home Rule ticket.
John’s son, William Wedgwood Benn (Tony’s father) would carry on this tradition. With a platform of “Justice for Ireland”, he stood as the Liberal MP for St George’s in 1906, before relocating to Leith in 1918. As one biographer recorded, “In the Commons, Wedgewood Benn was in the forefront of the attacks made jointly by the Labour Party and the independent Liberals on Lloyd George’s proposed solution to the growing unrest in Ireland.”
As Tony Benn later recalled, “I was brought up to believe in Indian independence and Irish independence. It was talked about constantly at home, and the argument entered my bloodstream.”
It must be said, however, that – having first entered the British Parliament in 1950 – the cause of Ireland received scant mention in Tony Benn’s early political diaries. This was an omission that he readily recognised, later reflecting, “The strange thing was that Ireland was hardly ever discussed in Cabinet.” It was not until the outbreak of conflict in the North, from the late-1960s onwards, that Benn began to follow developments in Ireland more keenly.
In July 1969, the British Cabinet had concluded that the Prime Minister could authorise the deployment of British troops into the North, so long as they kept the Home Secretary, Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary in the loop. Just one month later, on Friday 15 August, Benn heard over the radio that the Army had been deployed.
Four days later, the Cabinet met to discuss the decision and the deteriorating situation on the ground. As Benn noted, however, in his detailed account of the meeting, “The Stormont Government say it is the IRA who are the cause of the trouble but this does not conform to British intelligence.” As he later ruminated on the tenor of the day’s discussion, he questioned in his diary whether his colleagues truly “understood how serious the situation was”, and “whether, in fact, this was not the beginning of ten more years of Irish politics at Westminster which would be very unpleasant.” Admitting that, “None of us had thought it out very carefully.”
As he predicted, Irish politics subsequently features in his diary with greater frequency. Indeed, far beyond the ten years that he had anticipated.
Quite remarkably, on 10 April 1974, he recorded that the British Cabinet had agreed “under the highest secrecy, that we would begin considering the implications of a total withdrawal.” When the Labour MP, Roy Mason, publicly hinted at this possibility, in a speech two weeks later, Benn marvelled at how Gerry Fitt, then the MP for West Belfast, was “furious at Roy’s speech…”
With increased regularity, Benn chronicled his disapproval towards Labour’s approach to Ireland. He privately supported the transfer of the Price sisters to Armagh Gaol, arguing that “you cannot treat people who regard themselves as prisoners of war exactly as if they were common criminals.”
Following the death of the IRA volunteer Michael Gaughan, on hunger-strike in Parkhurst Prison, Benn jotted in his diary, “I think I may well be in a minority when I say in Cabinet that I believe we should withdraw form Northern Ireland as soon as we can on a phased, orderly basis, beginning by setting a date.”
By this stage Benn’s general political outlook had begun to drift further – and further – to the left. A steady progression that the Labour leader Harold Wilson memorable encapsulated with the remark, “I have always said about Tony that he immatures with age.”
With the Premiership of Margaret Thatcher from May 1979 onwards, Benn was cast into the wilderness of opposition politics, where his analysis of the Irish question only solidified further.
Following the collapse of the 1980 hunger-strike, he had received a “teach” (or comm) smuggled out of the H-Blocks of Long Kesh – written, on behalf of “all Irish republican POWs”, by Robert McCallum in H4 Block – appealing for his support. The words of the letter played on his mind considerably.
Six days after Bobby Sands, leader of the second hunger-strike, was elected as the Member of Parliament for Fermanagh South Tyrone, Benn stunned his Shadow Cabinet colleagues by proposing that measures should be taken to enable Sands to “take his seat.” (Although he later came to accept the democratic mandate of abstentionism, as a committed devotee of Westminster politics, Benn never entirely comprehended it.)
When, in response to his proposal, Neil Kinnock histrionically banged on the table and declared, “I am absolutely against violence, which destroys democracy.” Benn hissed across to him in reply, “Maybe you would feel differently if Wales was partitioned.” Days later, when his suggestion was invariably leaked to the press, his local constituency newspaper, The Bristol Evening Post, ran the headline: ‘BENN BACKS SANDS – LET HIM SIT AS MP’
The week after Sands’ death, after 66 days on hunger-strike, Benn publicly stated in a BBC radio interview that, “Britain’s military presence in Northern Ireland is a major part of the problem. We have got to find a way of allowing a solution to be found in Ireland itself.” The following day, when Labour leader Michael Foot rebuked him for not towing the party line, Benn defiantly replied, “my views on Northern Ireland are very well known; they are settled views reached over a very long time.”
On 26 July 1983, Tony Benn met Gerry Adams for the first time. He was thoroughly impressed with the new MP for West Belfast. Recording how Adams had said, “We have a lot in common with British socialists. You can’t be a socialist in Britain if you support British imperialism in Ireland, or even if you ignore it. Imperialism enslaves the British as well as the Irish.”
Benn was particularly taken with Sinn Féin’s analysis of the conflict and what was required to address the root cause of the violence. Appalled by the Conservative government’s use of exclusion orders and broadcast restrictions against Sinn Féin representatives, he did all he could to support and platform Irish republican voices in Britain.
In 1991, he tabled The Commonwealth of Britain Bill in the House of Commons. This radical reimaging of Britain’s constitutional framework stipulated that:
Two years after the passage of this Act, or on such an earlier date as the Commonwealth Parliament may determine, the jurisdiction of Britian in Northern Ireland shall cease, and from that date no legislation passed by that Parliament shall apply in Northern Ireland.
While the Bill never made it to Second Reading, it should not go unnoticed that on its introduction it was seconded by none other than Jeremy Corbyn MP.
In October 1993 he was called into the Speakers’ Office and reprimanded for inviting Gerry Adams to address in a Westminster meeting. But again, Benn did not falter, as he adamantly believed that “people in Britain ought to hear Gerry Adams’s case.”
He would continue to sponsor meeting rooms for Sinn Féin representatives throughout the 1990s. Following the 1997 Westminster election, he doggedly campaigned to ensure Sinn Féin MPs had access to Westminster facilities and the parliamentary estate, regularly meeting with – “an awfully nice creature” – Michelle Gildernew, who then headed Sinn Féin’s London Office.
Tony Benn heralded the Good Friday Agreement as a great achievement of the British Labour government, but routinely noted that it had only been achieved because was the government was prepared to talk to Sinn Féin.
As a student of Britain’s uncodified constitution, he noted that absolute British sovereignty, which had been consolidated in the Act of Union of 1800 and had remained absolute in 1920 when Ireland was partitioned, was now being vested instead in the people of the North of Ireland; to be quantified and assessed in a referendum requiring a simple majority. Constitutionally speaking, while Parliament was sovereign in England, Scotland and Wales; it was conditional in the North of Ireland.
Following his death on 14 March 2014, Gerry Adams paid tribute to a “true friend of the Irish people,” who “spoke up passionately for the idea of a united Ireland.” While Martin McGuinness wrote, “Our dear friend Tony Benn has died. He was a wonderful politician, a gentle soul, a peacemaker. The Irish People had no truer friend.”
I was privileged to hear Tony Benn speak on many occasions. I was even more privileged to briefly speak with him on rare occasion. He was always very kind, patient, and generous with his time.
In media interviews, he stated that he wished that his epitaph would be: “He encouraged us.” And he did. I still have a framed note that I received from him. “Dear Joe, Thanks for writing. Keep up your enthusiasm. Tony Benn.” On difficult days, I take encouragement from it.
It is a peculiar quirk of history that today, Tony’s son, Hilary Benn, is the British Secretary of State to the North of Ireland. It would be grossly unfair and unreasonable to hold any son to the measure and stature of their father. Whatever else, nobody should be blindly beholden to the beliefs of their parents. Nonetheless, Tony’s writings on Ireland would benefit any holder of the office that his son now occupies.
As the senior Benn once summarised, “There are many people, probably a majority in Britain, who believe that this is not an Irish problem but a British problem in Ireland and that the termination of British jurisdiction – in short that Britain should cease to claim its right to govern the province – is the only way of dealing with it, allowing the Irish, North and South, to find their own solutions to the problem of their relations.” What more need be said. Sin é.
- Joe Dwyer is a political organiser for Sinn Féin: you can follow him on Twitter/X.
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Excellent, more like this please!