“The Prime Minister said in 1911, 14 years before I was born, that if women get the vote it will undermine parliamentary democracy. Tony Benn thought any meaningful change could only come from below, and felt apathy was openly encouraged by those in positions of power.
7) “Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself” an educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern,” he said. “The people in debt become hopeless, and the hopeless people don’t vote. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.”Īnother quote from Tony Benn’s interview with Michael Moore in Sicko, in which he highlighted poverty and healthcare inequality as a democratic issue. 6) “I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. Tony Benn was a lifelong campaigner for constitutional reform, and introduced a bill that would have allowed him to renounce his peerage as early as 1955. Given the above, this quote is not especially surprising, but worth repeating. 4) “I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so” when he announced he would not be standing for re-election at the next general election 5) “The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.” I would be ashamed if I ever said anything I didn’t believe in, to get on personally. I made every mistake in the book, but making mistakes is how you learn.
Interviewed recently for Radio 4’s Today program, Tony Benn was asked to look back on his career. 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. In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. Tony Benn’s final speech to the House of Commons as MP was an appropriately eloquent farewell, in which he talked widely on his view of the role of parliament and the wider question of democracy. 2) His “Five questions” for the powerful.
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