Read The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990 Online
Authors: Tony Benn
The Benn Diaries: 1940-1990
CONTENTS
Tony Benn was first elected to the House of Commons in 1950 and retired in 2001 ‘to devote more time to politics’. He is the longest serving Labour MP of all time and has held senior Cabinet and party posts. He is now a visiting professor of government and politics at the LSE.
He is the author of many books, including his powerful case for constitutional change,
Common Sense
(with Andrew Hood),
Arguments for Socialism, Arguments for Democracy,
nine volumes of diaries and
Dare to be a Daniel,
Benn’s memoir of childhood.
Tony Benn has four children and ten grandchildren. He was married for 51 years to Caroline, socialist, teacher and author, who died in 2000.
Ruth Winstone has edited all volumes of Tony Benn’s Diaries and several biographies of political figures. She is associate editor of the
Times Guide to the House of Commons
; and currently works as a Library Clerk in the Commons.
THE REGENERATION OF BRITAIN
SPEECHES
ARGUMENTS FOR SOCIALISM
ARGUMENTS FOR DEMOCRACY
PARLIAMENT, PEOPLE AND POWER
TI IE SIZEWELL SYNDROME
FIGHTING BACK: SPEAKING OUT FOR SOCIALISM IN THE EIGHTIES
A FUTURE FOR SOCIALISM
COMMON SENSE
FREE RADICAL: NEW CENTURY ESSAYS
YEARS OF HOPE: DIARIES, PAPERS AND LETTERS 1940–1962
OUT OF THE WILDERNESS: Diaries 1963–1967
OFFICE WITHOUT POWER: Diaries 1968–1972
AGAINST THE TIDE: Diaries 1973–1976
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST: Diaries 1977–1980
THE END OF AN ERA: Diaries 1980–1990
FREE AT LAST!: Diaries 1991–2001
DARE TO BE A DANIEL: Then and Now
MORE TIME FOR POLITICS: Diaries 2001–2007
Tony Benn
Selected, Abridged and
Introduced by
Ruth Winstone
Line drawings
: Vicky ©
Evening Standard
; © Garland,
New Statesman
; Garland ©
Daily Telegraph
; Franklin ©
The Times, The Sun
; Cummings ©
Daily Express
; © Steve Bell,
Guardian
| April 1940 | Anthony Wedgwood Benn 15 years old. |
| Dec 1941 | William Wedgwood Benn MP is created a Labour peer, Lord Stansgate |
| July 1943 | Tony Benn joins RAF |
| June 1944 | Brother Michael killed in RAF |
| July 1945 | General Election. Clement Attlee PM |
| Aug 1945 | Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima |
| Jan 1946 | Tony Benn to New College, Oxford |
| June 1949 | Marriage to Caroline De Camp |
| Nov 1949 | Tony Benn becomes producer with BBC |
| Feb 1950 | General Election. Clement Attlee PM |
| June 1950 | Korean War |
| 30 Nov 1950 | Tony Benn elected for Bristol South East in by-election |
| Oct 1951 | General Election. Winston Churchill PM |
| Apr 1955 | Churchill resigns. Anthony Eden PM |
| Dec 1955 | Gaitskell elected Leader of Labour Party |
| June 1956 | Nasser nationalises Suez Canal |
| June–Nov 1956 | Suez crisis |
| Jan 1957 | Eden resigns. Macmillan PM |
| Oct 1959 | General Election. Macmillan PM |
| Nov 1959 | Tony Benn elected to NEC |
| Nov 1960 | Father dies. Benn disqualified from Commons |
| May 1961 | By-election Bristol South East. Tony Benn re-elected but is refused admission to the Commons |
| July 1961 | Election Court unseats Tony Benn |
| Jan 1963 | Gaitskell dies. Harold Wilson Leader of Labour Party |
| Jan 1963 | Joint Select Committee recommends reform of peerage law |
| July 1963 | Peerage Act passed. Tony Benn renounces Stansgate peerage |
| 20 Aug 1963 | By-election, Bristol South East. Tony Benn re-elected |
| Oct 1964 | General Election. Wilson PM. Tony Benn Postmaster General |
| Jan 1965 | Winston Churchill dies |
| March 1966 | General Election. Harold Wilson PM |
| June 1966 | Tony Benn Minister of Technology |
| June 1970 | General Election. Edward Heath PM |
| 1971/1972 | Tony Benn Chairman of Labour Party |
| Nov 1971 | Tony Benn contests deputy leadership of Labour Party |
| Feb 1974 | General Election. Harold Wilson PM. Tony Benn appointed Secretary of State for Industry |
| Oct 1974 | General Election. Harold Wilson PM |
| Feb 1975 | Margaret Thatcher becomes Leader of Conservative Party |
| June 1975 | Common Market Referendum. Tony Benn moved from Department of Industry to Energy |
| March 1976 | Harold Wilson resigns. Tony Benn contests leadership. James Callaghan PM |
| Feb 1977 | Anthony Crosland dies |
| May 1979 | General Election. Margaret Thatcher PM |
| Nov 1980 | Michael Foot elected Leader of Labour Party |
| June 1981 | Tony Benn in hospital with Guillain-Barre syndrome |
| Sept 1981 | Tony Benn contests deputy leadership of Labour Party |
| Apr–June 1982 | Falklands War |
| June 1983 | General Election. Margaret Thatcher PM Tony Benn loses in Bristol following Boundary Commission changes to constituencies |
| Oct 1983 | Neil Kinnock elected Leader of Labour Party |
| March 1984 | Tony Benn elected MP for Chesterfield |
| June 1987 | General Election. Margaret Thatcher PM |
| Oct 1988 | Tony Benn contests leadership of Labour Party |
| Nov 1990 | Tony Benn visits President Saddam Hussain in Iraq Margaret Thatcher resigns. John Major PM |
Ten years have passed since this single volume edition of the diaries of Tony Benn was first published. Two further books have appeared: a memoir of Benn’s childhood,
Dare to be a Daniel,
and
Free at Last!: 1990–2001,
which records the last years of Tony Benn’s parliamentary career and his entry into a new phase of personal and public life. The very early years described in
Daniel
are crucial to an understanding of a politician raised between two World Wars in the political tradition of radical non-conformism and in the culture of successful British entrepreneurship. This single volume edition should be read in conjunction with those two to appreciate the depth and unprecedented scope of the Benn Diaries.
By 2005, the year of publication of this book, the Labour Party had been in government for eight years consecutively, and for twenty-five of the preceding sixty years. But in the Election of May 2005, the proportion of the electorate voting for the government was the smallest in those sixty years. The distance the party has moved, and the bipartisanship of British political leaders at the beginning of the 21
st
century, has been meticulously chronicled by Tony Benn, himself a senior minister in the governments of the 1960s and 1970s, and an active participant in the Labour Party’s policy-making and organisational structures over the years. He thus also had a direct influence on the Party’s historic development, and witnessed the major ideological shifts which were accelerated in the 1990s under the banner of New Labour.
Chronicling – and interpreting – political life at the macro and micro level is a challenge to any serious political diarist. Tony Benn kept a regular daily record both as a Cabinet minister at the centre of governmental power and as a constituency MP (first in Bristol, and then in Chesterfield) confronted with his constituents’ wide-ranging individual and personal problems. As a result, the 15-million word diaries and associated archives present a coherent history of the massive transformation in technology, power, international relations and the social face of Britain.
This single volume edition will, I hope, reflect the essence of the five separate books from which it is distilled. I continue to believe, as I did ten
years ago, that, in the long run, it will be the small details of political life in the 20
th
century, as well as the major historical events and characters, which will endure and interest future generations of readers.