Tony Benn Spins in His Grave

There has been much talk today about the fact that Alex Salmond MP has suggested that Tony Benn would be turning in his grave at his son's speech and there are calls for him to apologise. For what? Alex on this occasion is correct. Tony Benn understood the difference between enforce power and representative governance. That it is not the right of a handful of MP's to enforce their will on the majority without the consent of that same majority. He once said: In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system. I think those words will resonate with a lot of people because it is today that many find themselves asking the very same question of themselves, namely how to get rid of the incumbent MP's who are putting all of our lives, the lives of our families and the lives of our friends at risk. Blamed by many for contributing to Labour’s lack of electoral success during the 1980s, Tony Benn was a totem for those who rejected the shift to the right widely seen as necessary if the party was to regain power. This shift was eventually completed under Tony Blair, who pushed through the abandonment of clause IV and redefined Labour as a party comfortable with privatisation and free market economics. The quote above indicates why Benn resisted such a move. In response to this, Tony Benn was quoted as saying "“We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.”" After his retirement from parliament, Benn became the public face of the Stop the War coalition. In a particularly spiky edition of BBC Question Time, his exchanges with US Republican John Bolton included this broadside: I was born about a quarter of a mile from where we are sitting now and I was here in London during the Blitz. And every night I went down into the shelter. 500 people killed, my brother was killed, my friends were killed. And when the Charter of the UN was read to me, I was a pilot coming home in a troop ship: ‘We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.’ That was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation and you tore it up. And it’s a war crime that’s been committed in Iraq, because there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons. Now we find ourselves on the cusp of another war, more intervention in the middle east and the risk of suicide bombings at home. Indeed, we find that the collateral damage from bombs being dropped from a Tornado aircraft will have the same effect for civilian lives abroad as a suicide bomb would have here at home, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. No matter how refined the weaponry, innocent civilians will always pay the price. I cannot help but feel, if Tony was around and had listened to his son's speech he would have applied the very same thought process and would indeed have repeated the statement "that was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation and you tore it up.