Tony Benn: Trending quotes (page 3)

“The key to any progress is to ask the question why? All the time. Why is that child poor? Why was there a war? Why was he killed? Why is he in power? And of course questions can get you into a lot of trouble, because society is trained by those who run it, to accept what goes on. Without questions we won't make any progress at all.”

Tony Benn

Interview in Creating Freedom (2013).
2000s

War , Question , Time , Training

“It takes powers which are permanent—this is not a temporary provisions Bill—and cover all fuels. I welcome the Bill because it will enable a Labour Government to do all they want under Labour's programme for Britain…It will give us the power to control all the oil companies, all the multi-nationals, to fix their prices and their distribution systems; and under these powers every other fuel and its use, including the chemical industry, will be brought within the control of the Government of the day. This will include road transport and private transport.”

Tony Benn

Speech in the House of Commons (26 November 1973) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1973/nov/26/fuel-and-electricity-bill on the Conservatives' Fuel and Electricity (Control) Bill
1970s

“The House will forgive me for quoting five democratic questions that I have developed during my life. 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.”

Tony Benn

Speech http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmhansrd/vo981116/debtext/81116-27.htm#81116-27_spnew6 in the House of Commons (16 November 1998)
1990s

Life , Quotes , Exercises , Forgiveness

“[Edward Heath], who sold out Britain's interests to the Common Market and gave our sovereignty away without our consent—with support of Mr Thorpe and the Liberals—is not entitled to wave the Union Jack to get himself out of the mess.”

Tony Benn

Speech in Bristol (30 November, 1973), quoted in ' 'Democracy in danger' warning by Mr Benn', The Times (1 December, 1973), pp. 1-2
1970s

Support

“The 1973 Labour Conference will have before it the most radical programme the Party has prepared since 1945.”

Tony Benn

'More equality and more democracy', The Times (1 October 1973), p. 16
1970s

“The engineers are taking their stand on grounds of conscience… Conscientious objection to the law is not a criminal act. These people are our people and we should take a principled stand, together.”

Tony Benn

Speech on Hugh Scanlon's union's rejection of the Industrial Relations Act in Wells, Somerset (23 November 1973).
1970s

People , Law

“First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.”

Tony Benn

The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press, 1993, ISBN 0231071949, 9780231071949. A similar quotation is almost invariably attributed to Gandhi, but more likely derives from a 1914 US trade union address:
"And, my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that, is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America." General Executive Board Report and Proceedings [of The] Biennial Convention, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 1914. Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=I-0UAAAAIAAJ&q=%22first+they+ignore+you%22+%22build+monuments%22&dq=%22first+they+ignore+you%22+%22build+monuments%22&lr=&as_brr=0&pgis=1
2000s

Madness

“Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise.”

Tony Benn

In New Politics (1970)
1970s

Education , Exercises , Democracy , Support

“In developing our industrial strategy for the period ahead, we have the benefit of much experience. Almost everything has been tried at least once…The one constant element throughout this long history of policy has been the fact that these alternatives have been largely centrally decided and imposed and have been seen as problems of economics and management rather than as problems of politics and consent…Any constructive long-term industrial strategy must be developed by the longer, slower route of real consultation and power sharing, all done more openly. There is no alternative.”

Tony Benn

Speech in the House of Commons (13 March 1974) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1974/mar/13/industry-and-energy
1970s

History , Problem

“Well I came across Marx rather late in life actually, and when I read him, two things: first of all I realised that he'd come to the conclusion about capitalism which I'd come to much later, and I was a bit angry he'd thought of it first; and secondly, I see Marx who was an old Jew, as the last of the Old Testament Prophets, this old bearded man working in the British Library, studying capitalism, that's what 'Das Kapital' was about, it was an explanation of British capitalism. And I thought to myself, 'Well anyone could write a book like that, but what infuses, what comes out of his writing, is the passionate hostility to the injustice of capitalism. He was a Prophet, and so I put him in that category as an Old Testament Prophet.”

Tony Benn

Interview with John Cleary (23 February 2003).
2000s

Life , Hostility , Books , Study

“Anyone from abroad will tell you that it is the class system that really lies at the root of our problems, economic and industrial. The House of Lords symbolises that.”

Tony Benn

As quoted in Yorkshire Post (22 November 1976)
1970s

Problem , Housing

“I have tried to define democracy, and worked out five criteria. If you meet a powerful person, ask them five questions: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interest do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How could we get rid of you?Because if you can’t get rid of the people who have power over you they don’t have to listen to you. The reason the members of parliament and prime ministers, with all their defects, have to listen is because the Day of Judgement comes on polling day, whereas the bankers, the World Trade Organization, the IMF, the Pope, the mullahs, the rabbis, don’t have to listen — because they are there. Some of them say they’re there because God gave them power, others say they are following the inescapable conclusions of a market-related society. But whatever justification they give they aren’t accountable and can’t be removed — and I will not be governed by people I can’t get rid of. For that very reason, people who do have power don’t like democracy because it will undermine the security they think they have.”

Tony Benn

Tony Benn interview “Hope is the key, Share International” https://share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2003/jan_03.htm#benn (January 2003)
2000s

Democracy , God , Question , Personality

“People at the top do not want to share their power. They’ve always got some marvellous reason: I’m following my religion; I’m following the laws of economics. Even Stalin: I’m representing the vanguard of the working class, so please don’t cause trouble. That is the battle that every generation has, and yet we mustn’t be pessimistic about it…”

Tony Benn

Tony Benn interview “Hope is the key, Share International” https://share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2003/jan_03.htm#benn (January 2003)
2000s

Religion , People , Law

“The United States has enough military hardware and technology to… bully, bribe and blackmail people into going along with their wars is something you mustn’t underestimate. …The multinationals have no loyalty to the United States any more than they have any loyalty to Britain, but the way they express their interest is by buying both political parties in America and expecting a pay-off whichever one wins — and that is totally anti-democratic.”

Tony Benn

Tony Benn interview: Hope is the key, Share International Foundation http://www.share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2003/jan_03.htm#benn (January 2003).
2000s

Way , War , Loyalty , People

“The issues raised in the historic conflict between Charles I, resting his claim to govern Britain on the divine right of kings, and Parliament - representing, however imperfectly, a demand for the wider sharing of power - concerned the use and abuse of state power, the right of the governed to a say in their government, and the nature of political freedom. The Levellers grew out of this conflict. They represented the aspirations of working people who suffered under the persecution of kings, landowners and the priestly class, and they spoke for those who experienced the hardships of poverty and deprivation. They developed and campaigned, first with Cromwell and then against him, for a political and constitutional settlement of the civil war which would embody principles of political freedom, anticipating by a century and a half the ideas of the American and French revolutions.”

Tony Benn

' The Levellers and the Tradition of Dissent https://web.archive.org/web/20081214151939/https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/benn_levellers_01.shtml' (1 June 2001)
2000s

Freedom , War , People , Suffering

“I was the first MP to table a motion condemning apartheid in South Africa. When I first met Nelson Mandela he was a terrorist, when I next saw him, he was a Nobel Prize winner and the President of South Africa.”

Tony Benn

Interview with Andrew Walker (10 March 2001), quoted in BBC News, 'Tony Benn: End of an era' (10 March 2001) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1209497.stm
2000s

“Establishment necessarily involves a subtle corruption of the spirit of the church because it is safely embedded in the wider establishment of society, which includes the privileged and the powerful. … How can those Christians who see monetarism being so cruelly applied to the old, the sick, the homeless, women, the black community, and the young unemployed, lead a struggle against this injustice from within an established church subject to a Cabinet and a parliamentary majority composed of those very people who are responsible for implementing those very policies?”

Tony Benn

Speech to St James's Church, Piccadilly (2 March 1983), quoted in The Times (3 March 1983), p. 14
1980s

People , Women , Communication

“When it comes to it, we shall have to make sovereignty negotiable, either by ceding it to the United Nations or arranging a transfer in some other way. … Do not use that as an excuse for war. We cannot kill for flags today.”

Tony Benn

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1982/apr/29/falkland-islands#S6CV0022P0_19820429_HOC_280 in the House of Commons (29 April 1982) on the Falklands War
1980s

Way , War , Making love

“I tell the Prime Minister that this is an ill-thought-out enterprise and will not achieve the purposes to which it is put.”

Tony Benn

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1982/apr/07/falkland-islands#column_993 in the House of Commons (7 April 1982) on the Falklands War
1980s

“I do not think we have a free press in Britain today. There is not a single newspaper that I can buy, not one in Britain that reflects my political position. And The Times, dare I say to you, is really disreputable. It does not print truthfully and faithfully what happens and it pretends, because it is printed in small print that it is above argument. But it is a political propaganda instrument like The Sun, but it is printed in rather better print and rather shrewder language.”

Tony Benn

Press conference in Athens (12 March 1982), quoted in The Times (13 March 1982), p. 5
1980s

Sun , Thinking , Time