Tony Benn was out there at the head of the TUC march last weekend
arguing for an alternative to the cuts. In many ways the theme of the
march provided a good subtitle for Mr Benn’s life, staying strong to his
principles, arguing for a fairer and more just way of organising
society. “Every generation has to fight the same battles, again and
again,” says Mr Benn who still speaks three or four times a week at
meetings around the country. At 86, it is not unreasonable to say that
the former Labour cabinet minister has seen it all before. As such he
remains dubious about the so called allies’ intervention in Libya. “The
West has decided to intervene supposedly to stop civilians from dying.
Yet in Bahrain they have sent troops into crush the revolt and Yemen is
also using force against demonstrators,” said Mr Benn. “It is not
logical and it means in effect we have gone to war with Libya. Not that
this is anything new, Britain used to run Libya.” As a former energy
minister in the Labour Government, Mr Benn has always been concerned
about nuclear power. He does not believe the industry is trustworthy and
will repeatedly lie to protect its own interests. He recalls when in
office not being told that plutonium was being exported from British
power stations to the US to be used in nuclear weapons. “We were
effectively running bomb factories for the Pentagon,” recalled Mr Benn,
who believes the destabilisation of the Japanese power station Fukishima
provides a timely reminder of the danger of nuclear power production.
“The earthquake provided a reminder that nature is our master. I hope
and believe it will make people ask questions about the nuclear
industry. It is dangerous and when I was in charge of it I realised I
could never believe a word those running the industry said,” said Mr
Benn. What the industry is good at is reinventing itself. Most recently
this has seen the nuclear industry gaining a rebirth as a means to cut
carbon emissions in the fight against global warming. Mr Benn points out
that this has happened before, some 10 years after the dropping of the
bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Then it was sold as cheap, safe and for
peace. But this was false; it is not cheap once the cost of clear up is
taken into account. It is not safe as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and
now Fukishima show and it does not promote peace,” said Mr Benn, who
does not believe the public are being told the truth about the nuclear
damage being done in Japan now. The former energy minister hopes that
the tragedy in Japan will cut short any plans in Britain to build a new
generation of nuclear power stations. Mr Benn believes that David
Cameron is a straightforward neo-liberal Thatcherite. “The attack on the
NHS is something Mrs Thatcher would not have dreamed of,” said Mr Benn,
who can never recall a time of such public anger. The fact that the
mass of people are now being made to pay for the irresponsibility of the
banks is fuelling much of that anger. He is though optimistic about the
prospects of the Labour Party under Ed Miliband, which he sees getting
more back to its fundamentals after the New Labour neo-liberal
experiment foundered. He believes that Mr Miliband will be more
respectful of the trade unions and the people who they represent
remembering that it was the unions which put him in place. “It is going
to be the popular movement that shapes how the Labour Party reacts,”
said Mr Benn, who remains loyal to his democratic socialist principles.
He quotes the creation of the National Health Service as one of the most
socialist things ever done by a Labour Government. “The NHS remains the
most popular institution. People won’t accept a world dominated by
wealth and money, a world where the rich benefit at the expense of
everyone else,” said Mr Benn. “Socialism is about democracy, people
taking control.” Mr Benn still believes in the programme of industrial
democracy that he put forward in the early 1970s, which would have seen
25 areas taken into state ownership remains a useful blueprint for
today. Today, these would include banking, health, education, energy
resources and railways. “The government plays a very important role in
shaping the economic policy. It has to do more than manage how
capitalism runs,” said Mr Benn. The state of the traditional media is
not something that inspires hope in Mr Benn, though he does take heart
from the different sources of information now made available through the
internet. This has helped inspire some of the popular revolts in the
Middle East and North Africa. In Britain, Rupert Murdoch’s interests
dominate broadcast and print media. Meanwhile, the BBC represents the
British establishment. “There is no trade union news, it is all about
the financial markets, it is a view from a rich man’s world,” said Mr
Benn. “The BBC refuses to mention the Morning Star which carries trade
union and international news.” He is though keen that the BBC is not
sold off to Mr Murdoch. The arrival of Wikileaks on the scene has also
helped to set many people free. “Wikileaks is important because
information is a source of power. In the old days governments wanted to
know everything about everyone with no one knowing what they did.
Wikileaks has changed all of that, bringing a transformation of power to
the people,” said Mr Benn, who believes Wikileaks founder Julian
Assange and US military source Bradley Manning are important figures in
helping to liberate us. It has been a long held theory of Mr Benn that
there are real radical reforms every 40 years. The last big change came
in 1980 when Thatcher came to power bringing the neo-liberal capitalist
model. Previously there was the Labour Government of 1945 and the
reforms of the Liberal Government of 1906 and formation of the Labour
Party. So there should be major change coming over the next few years,
whether it will be caused by economic meltdown, global warming or a
combination of the two no one knows. What Mr Benn though is sure of is
that if the change is to be for the betterment of humanity it is likely
to come from the struggle of the mass of people for justice and
democracy. Who knows, maybe the changes have already started with the
popular revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, where next London
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