Tributes to Tony Benn

Baroness Clark of Kilwinning Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for giving us the opportunity to say a few words in tribute to Tony Benn today.

I only met Tony Benn when I was elected as a Member in 2005, but I had heard him speak and seen him at labour movement events over two decades. I probably first saw him speak in Ayrshire during the miners’ strike, but I saw him regularly at events in Scotland over many years, whether in Ayrshire, Edinburgh, Glasgow or Aberdeen. He was a man of huge energy and an inspiration to many people of many generations.

It was a pleasure to listen to what the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) said about the miners’ strike. I come from the south Ayrshire mining communities, and when I was at school there were 10,000 miners working at the Killoch pit in south Ayrshire. That pit closed as a result of Government policy, and Tony Benn was with us, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), who will recall attending a number of rallies in Ayrshire in defence of ordinary working people, particularly the miners in the south Ayrshire coalfields. Tony Benn was there standing up for communities, wherever they were, when they needed him.

Tony Benn would always speak about his connections with Scotland. We have heard a number of references today to English social history, but when he came to Scotland, he spoke about his connections to communities there. I believe that his mother came from Paisley, and that one of his family members was the Member of Parliament for Leith, and he would speak about that when he came to Edinburgh. Of course, his wife, Caroline Benn, spent a great deal of time in Ayrshire, particularly in Cumnock, researching the life of Keir Hardie, who was born in Cumnock and spent a great deal of time in both south Ayrshire, where he was born, and north Ayrshire, where he was a miners’ agent and a journalist for the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald. Tony Benn knew all about that—he knew about the history of the social working class and the Scottish working class, and he would speak about that when he came to Scotland.

I saw him speak on many occasions. He was clearly an incredibly inspirational speaker who knew how to connect with ordinary people and speak in a language that they understood. Perhaps not many of us can do that, but he was clearly a wonderful example of it.

The significance of Tony Benn is that he believed that another world was possible. He believed that the way in which we organised our society is not the only way that we can do so. He was interested in history because he believed we could learn from it, and that we had changed the world because we had believed it was possible to do things better. When he came to Ayrshire, he would talk about thirlage, which was how mining communities operated in Scotland—you were not born a slave, but if you went to work in the mines, you did not have the right to leave. It was this House that voted through the thirlage Act, which meant that if you escaped for a year and a day, you won your freedom and did not have to return to the gated communities of the mines in Scotland. Tony Benn would speak about things like that. He would inspire people and try to make them understand how we could actually get social change.

I spoke at the Oxford union a number of weeks ago along with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), and we were successful that evening in our debate about whether socialism worked or not. A young comrade in the audience reported to Tony Benn what had happened that evening, and I got a text saying that Tony had been delighted to hear that 65 years after his presidency, the Oxford union had eventually come round to his way of thinking. I say that because one thing that amazed me about Tony Benn was the relationships he had with so many people, and the fact that a young student from Oxford would go to see him to tell him about an event he had been to. Tony Benn was interested in everybody and in every cause. He continued to be involved in setting up organisations and trying to organise people for a better world, whether for a small or large group of people.

The Deputy Prime Minister said he thought that some of Tony Benn’s causes were causes of the past, of nationalisation and looking at globalisation, but I think the complete opposite is true. The more we look at what Tony Benn said—not just Tony Benn but others who have spoken about such issues and the way that markets and our country operate—the more that over time I think we will realise that in many ways he was right when he questioned whether we actually live in a democracy. We will see that voting every five years is not what democracy is about because we need a lot more than that. I believe that if we look at the ideas of Tony Benn, we will have the kinds of ideas we need to create a true democracy in this country.