Tony Benn. RIP

I misheard the initial report and thought that Tony Blair had died which caused somewhat conflicting emotion!

Benn embodied the attributes so sadly lacking in his more 'successful' colleague. Honesty, integrity, principles, humanity and modesty.

Bruce

An old school politician with integrity, a tireless campaigner for his constituents and the working class of this country, orator and writer.

RIP Tony.   

I’ll always remember Tony Benn for being very sincere about Socialism, and his fine intelligent, modesty, and honesty, all the virtues politicians lack so badly these days.

He was also a very knowledgeable historian who was very interesting to listen too with his explanations in good and true perspective.

Mr Benn was really was a credit to the Labour Party and it’s cause, so unlike the tory trickster capitalist new fangled labourites like Blair, Brown, Millipeads, Mandleson et al.

He was a credit to Socialism. How he must have hated New Labour!

Bruce

Agree with this 100%. RIP

He said Blair was the worst Labour Prime Minister period. 

Spare us, please. For the Tories he was a gift, for long-suffering labour voters a pain in the neck. No one would or ever did vote for his utopian fantasies except for his unfortunate Chesterfield constituents who really had no other choice. Tony Blair delivered 3 resounding electoral victories for the Labour party - does anyone seriously believe Benn would have delivered one?

Marou - I think you're right about the unlikely prospect of a Labour party led Benn ever winning an election but I think it possible to admire both a politcian who was a pragmatic and charimsatic "winner" (Blair) and one who had beliefs and integrity which there weren't prepared to bend for electoral popularity (Benn).  

I did not say I thought he was always right, or indeed that he was electable.

I respected his integrity

I guess this is off topic but I would say Blair did not win for the Labour Party but for himself.

Bruce

This is one of many issues with Thatcherite politics and Blair was an active exponent of them. The winner and loser attitude - you lost the election therefore you are worthless. Parliamentary democracy (and according to Benn we have a pretty weak one at the best of times) isn't the same as a football match. You won't find many politicians who will publicly state that their party wasn't good enough to win an election, or that they could currently best serve the electorate in opposition. This kind of critical realism set Benn apart. Honesty and conviction. Something in short supply and a hindrance to a "successful" politician. 

A force to be reckoned with. One probably would not agree with his views but one would certainly pay attention to what he was saying.  That's where the difference lies.

A true politician unlike today's offerings!

R.I.P.

He wasn't a great "politician" as such but he was a highly principled one. 

I'll remember him as just another politician with bloodstained fingers from helping kill off the British motorcycle industry in the seventies.

What Tony said. 

That analysis is about as wide of the mark as it's possible to get.

What Tony said + the brit bike management didn't have either the vision or the funding to move out of the Jurassic age, the Japanese did that.  

All Tony Benn & his incompetent cohorts did was to turn the inevitable clock faster.

Same with the car industry - just add the loony left unions in the mix - same thing

One of his typical quotes( C&P from New Statesman):-

 "If one meets a powerful person - Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler -  one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system."

Many thanks for the considered and erudite reply. Sure, poor management was a major factor (and an easy target) for the state of the industry when Tony Benn became Industry Secretary in '74. But it seems remiss not to mention a few more, like: militant unions, shareholders wanting short term profits, allowing motorcycle imports from Japan with reciprocal rights being refused, a government that spent most of the Marshall money after the war on propping up the Empire rather than investing in modernising industries and infrastructure like Germany and France did.

T W-B backed the workers' co-op at Meriden with the intention of mass nationalisation if it proved successful. The 18 month blockade cost NVT dearly in restarting Trident production, unable to retrieve tools, jigs, partly completed motorcycles, etc; and the refusal of his successor to renew export credits, along with recalling a 4 million pound loan were the final nails that, like I said, killed off the industry. His Meriden experiment was a sideline that limped on soaking up money until closing in '83.

Graeme

Biking British since '72 

A great deal of British manufacturing industry was already killing itself in the 1960s, let alone being killed by Tony Benn in the 1970s.

There was a profound lack of investment in R&D, and completely new designs. The problem is that antiquated designs that had served from the Post-War era were still selling well, and so you had things like the Morris Minor still being made in 1970, even though it was first produced in 1948, and was born as a concept years before that.

Same with the M/C industry. More performance was managed by tweaking existing archaic designs in too many cases. The old problems of leaking oil and dubious cooling in some cases were only made worse with more performance, and eventually almost the whole production of the British motor and M/C industry was simply unreliable, and out of date technologically.

Then came the economic unravelling of the 1970s when Britain was referred to as the, "Sick man of Europe," and you had a recipe for disaster. The Labour Government was begging at the IMF's door for aid, the bank rate rose to 17% and inflation was galloping even faster.

This was based on Britain still working as a great power with a powerful trade with most of the rest of the World. Times had changed and Britain had changed far less.

The fall-out was that the unreformed industries declined, were given aid by the Government [tax-payers money of course] and yet still died out.

I don't think we can blame the politicians who were there at the funeral for the long untreated illness that had afflicted industry in Britian for decades before the final collapse.

ATB from George

Sad loss to our political system.  He had the kind of honesty and integrity that the current crop lack.

I think this came about on the back of the general thought that "British was best".  There was this belief that this was the case when it clearly was not. The Japanese motorbikes hit our market and they just worked, did not break down anything like as often as UK built bikes and it didn't take that long for an entire industry to die on it's arse.

Triumph have made a magnificent effort over the last couple of decades and it's that kind of management that's needed to stay competitive in a world wide market.  Not the old boys club who ran the big nationalised industries in the past.

I was a passionate supporter and rider of British motorbikes, right up until I had access to things like the Honda 750/4 and the Suzuki GT750. And that was just the start. I didn't desert the nation (I had a variety of British and foreign bikes after my Reed Titan 810), I just had more to chose from. And it was self evident that the bike industry struggled for the same reasons as the car industry. Past all the posturing, arguments, tribalism and column inches, they failed - and ultimately would have no matter what - because they sold poor quality old tech equipment at premium prices.

The funny thing is, who'd rather not own one of these now:

Original 1969 Triumph Bonneville T120R : )

Tony Benn would of approved of the colour : )

Debs

Hi I am 79 had plenty of bikes we could never make them they always leaked oil, what did the japs do just turned the crank case seal from vertical to flat done away with cable brakes,They are better engineers than us we can learn from them regards.