1950s

• I must tell the House quite frankly that if I were confronted with a Japanese at this present moment and were asked to tell him that I believed that he was wrong in the treatment of those British prisoners in his hands, I could not but accept a similar criticism from him on the question of the atom bomb. I should be quite unable to avoid it. I am afraid I must say on the question of principle here involved—this question of moral principle—that I believe it to be humbug, when so many people, women, children, old folk, were killed by the atom bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. For every individual photograph that could be produced of a wounded and battered British prisoner of war in Japanese hands, I think one could find an equally horrible photograph of a victim of the atomic bomb. [Interruption.] An hon. Friend of mine says that the two things are not comparable. I do not myself believe that it is possible to draw any distinctions in war between the brutalities on both sides.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (10 May 1951)

• With inherited liberal principles, I feel that the free movement of all people is a good thing and one to be encouraged. ... The Declaration of Human Rights has for one of its Articles the right of the human being to take a nationality, to change it, and not to be denied the right arbitrarily to change it. I realise it is not as easy as that, but most of the difficulties are definable difficulties based on facts and situations which the economic planners now available to Government Departments should be able to grasp and measure. I believe that the basic problem which prevents more immigration is an economic one. ... [T]here is a nearer approach to the ideal of universal admission in the United States than there is here. I think we could learn something from that. ... If we were to work out some form of migration policy based on these lines we would be doing some service to that free movement of populations which is a vital prerequisite to understanding in all parts of the world.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (26 July 1951)

• It is we, on this side, who object to dreams of empire, because we think in terms of free association and we believe that the empire that was built up was based on force and domination by this country.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (13 September 1956)

• There can be no greater friend of Israel in this House than I am. I say that quite sincerely. I have pressed that Israel should have arms in the present situation. I believe that if ever there was a case for it, it is today, with the massive supply of Russian war materials now going into Egypt, and that Israel should have more arms at once.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (13 September 1956)

1960s

• [T]he Treaty of Rome which entrenches laissez-faire as its philosophy and chooses Bureaucracy as its administrative method will stultify effective national economic planning without creating the necessary supranational planning mechanisms for growth and social justice under democratic control. ... [T]he political inspiration of the EEC amounts to a belief in the institutionalisation of NATO, which will harden the division of Europe and encourage the emergence of a new nuclear superpower, thus worsening East–West relations and making disarmament more difficult.
  • Encounter (January 1963), quoted in Ruth Winstone (ed.), Best of Benn: Speeches, Diaries, Letters and Other Writings (Arrow, 2015), p. 21

• [O]n balance Britain would have far less influence on world events if she were inside [the EEC] than she could have if she remained outside.
  • Encounter (January 1963), quoted in Ruth Winstone (ed.), Best of Benn: Speeches, Diaries, Letters and Other Writings (Arrow, 2015), p. 22

• Even relatively benign and temporary authoritarianism that rests upon elected power is being challenged. We are moving rapidly towards a situation where the pressure for the redistribution of political power will have to be faced as a major political issue. In a world where authoritarianism of the left or right is a very real possibility, the question of whether ordinary people can govern themselves by consent is still on trial—as it always has been, and always will be. Beyond parliamentary democracy as we know it, we shall have to find a new popular democracy to replace it.
  • Speech to the Welsh Council of Labour (25 May 1968), quoted in The Times (27 May 1968), p. 2

1970s

• The flag of racialism which has been hoisted in Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one that fluttered 25 years ago over Dachau and Belsen.
  • Speech at Students for a Labour Victory rally, referring to Enoch Powell who was MP for Wolverhampton South West, Methodist Central Hall, London (3 June 1970), as quoted in "Onslaught on Powell by Wedgwood Benn" by Denis Taylor in The Times (4 June 1970), p. 1

• 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.
  • In New Politics (1970)

• The demand for more popular power is building up most insistently in industry, and the pressure for industrial democracy has now reached such a point that a major change is now inevitable, at some stage. What is happening is not just a respectful request for consultation before management promulgates its decisions. Workers are not going to be fobbed off with a few shares...or by a carbon copy of the German system of co-determination. The campaign is very gradually crystallizing into a demand for real workers' control. However revolutionary the phrase may sound; however many Trotskyite bogeys it may conjure up, that is what is being demanded and that is what we had better start thinking about.
  • 'Towards workers' control', The Times (5 September 1970), p. 12

• Workers now have, through interdependence, enormous negative power to dislocate the system. Workers' control—if it means the power to plan their own work and to hire and fire the immediate plant management just as M.P.s are now hired and fired by the voters—converts that existing negative power into positive and constructive power. It thus creates the basis of common interest with local managers struggling to make a success of the business and to get devolved authority from an over-centralized bureaucratic board of management now perhaps sitting on them from above.
  • 'Towards workers' control', The Times (5 September 1970), p. 12

• We want industry to be in the public sector, to change the power structure of our society...We have not yet carved out of public enterprise a wide enough area of management decision which ought properly to be brought within the ambit of the workers themselves.
  • Speech in Brighton (6 October 1971)

• [Men] who would rather go to jail than betray what they believe to be their duty to their fellow workers and the principles which they hold.
  • From an issued statement from Mr. Benn on five dockers imprisoned for contempt of court (21 July 1972)

• [The first principle of British democracy is] our prime duty to each other and to what our conscience tells us to be right. If this leads individuals into conflict with the law, those individuals must be ready to take the consequences non-violently. In our democracy no man should tell another man to break the law, nor should any man break the law to by-pass Parliament. But a person who is punished for breaking an unjust law may if he is sincere and his cause wins public sympathy, create a public demand to have that unjust law changed through Parliament. This is the first and most fundamental principle of British democracy. It has a deep moral significance. Our religious and political liberties rest upon it.
  • Speech in Bristol (4 August 1972), quoted in The Times (5 August 1972), p. 2

• [The third principle of British democracy was that national sovereignty belonged to the people.] We lend it to our representatives to use for five years at a time. ... Any Government or MP pretending to give away these sovereign powers without the explicit consent of the people is acting unconstitutionally. Laws that pretend to take away these powers permanently have no moral authority. ... [Heath's government] will fail because they are trying to act contrary to centuries of British tradition. The people will not have it. But the resistance that is building up is not, in any sense, revolutionary.
  • Speech in Bristol (4 August 1972), quoted in The Times (5 August 1972), p. 2

• Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.
  • Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (2 October 1972); Labour Party Annual Conference Report (1972), p. 103

• I sometimes wish the trade unionists who work in the mass media, those who are writers and broadcasters and secretaries and printers and lift operators of Thomson House would remember that they too are members of our working class movement and have a responsibility to see that what is said about us is true.
  • Chairman's closing address to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (6 October 1972); Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1972, p. 349

• [The Conservatives' Industry Act contains] the most comprehensive armoury of government control that has ever been assembled for use over private industry, far exceeding all the powers thought necessary by the last Labour government...Heath has performed a very important historical role in preparing for the fundamental and irreversible transfer in the balance of power and wealth which has to take place...The whole nature of the mixed economy operating on market forces has been transformed by this quiet revolution in a way that is not yet fully appreciated.
  • 'Heath's spadework for socialism', The Sunday Times (25 March 1973), p. 61

• The 1973 Labour Conference will have before it the most radical programme the Party has prepared since 1945.
  • 'More equality and more democracy', The Times (1 October 1973), p. 16

• The [pay] policy is principally designed to hold down wages rather than to check inflation. Inflation is being used as an excuse to destroy free trade union bargaining.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (7 November 1973)

• The fines on the engineering union and the heavy damages that may be levied against the transport union go well beyond questions of economic policy and strike at the roots of free trade unionism. Conscientious objection to the law is not a criminal act. It is not the same as an attempt to overturn the Government and set up a new one, without elections, by the direct use of industrial strength.
  • Speech in Wells, Somerset (23 November 1973) on Hugh Scanlon's union's rejection of the Industrial Relations Act, quoted in The Times (24 November 1973), p. 2

• 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.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (26 November 1973) on the Conservatives' Fuel and Electricity (Control) Bill

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

• 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.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (13 March 1974)

• What we lack in Government is entrepreneurial ability.
  • Speech in London (6 June 1974)

• This huge Commission building in Brussels, in the shape of a cross, is absolutely un-British. I felt as if I were going as a slave to Rome; the whole relationship was wrong. Here was I, an elected man who could be removed, doing a job, and here were these people with more power than I had and no accountability to anybody...My visit confirmed in a practical way all my suspicions that this would be the decapitation of British democracy without any countervailing advantage, and the British people, quite rightly, wouldn't accept it. There is no real benefit for Britain.
  • Diary entry (18 June 1974), quoted from Against the Tide. Diaries 1973-1976 (London: Hutchinson, 1989), p. 180, p. 182

• Britain's continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation and the end of our democratically elected Parliament as the supreme law making body in the United Kingdom.
  • Letter to Bristol constituents (29 December 1974), reprinted in Tony Benn, 'The Common Market: Loss of Self-Government', in M. Holmes (ed.), The Eurosceptical Reader (Springer, 2016), p. 38

• We have come to the end of a chapter in our industrial history. The industrial system to which the Tory Party adheres—at least officially and in its manifestos—has failed us. ... It is no use blaming working people or the unions if they have to work in ancient factories with obsolete equipment producing old-fashioned goods at unecomonic prices and earning low wages as well. Working people not only are not responsible for the weakness of British manufacturing industry. They have hitherto been denied the tools and tackle that they needed to put it right. ... We have got to make a fresh start now. We have got to get investment up, and to get it up as soon as we can. If the market economy cannot or will not give us that investment, we must do it direct.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (17 February 1975) on the Second Reading of the Industry Bill

• If I had rescued a child from drowning, the national press would no doubt have headlined the story “Benn grabs child.”
  • Remarks to the National Executive Committee (26 February 1975), quoted in The Times (27 February 1975), p. 3 and The Times (28 June 1999), p. 3

• We have confused the real issue of parliamentary democracy, for already there has been a fundamental change. The power of electors over their law-makers has gone, the power of MPs over Ministers has gone, the role of Ministers has changed. The real case for entry has never been spelled out, which is that there should be a fully federal Europe in which we become a province. It hasn't been spelled out because people would never accept it. We are at the moment on a federal escalator, moving as we talk, going towards a federal objective we do not wish to reach. In practice, Britain will be governed by a European coalition government that we cannot change, dedicated to a capitalist or market economy theology. This policy is to be sold to us by projecting an unjustified optimism about the Community, and an unjustified pessimism about the United Kingdom, designed to frighten us in. Jim quoted Benjamin Franklin, so let me do the same: "He who would give up essential liberty for a little temporary security deserves neither safety nor liberty." The Common Market will break up the UK because there will be no valid argument against an independent Scotland, with its own Ministers and Commissioner, enjoying Common Market membership. We shall be choosing between the unity of the UK and the unity of the EEC. It will impose appalling strains on the Labour movement...I believe that we want independence and democratic self-government, and I hope the Cabinet in due course will think again.
  • Speech given in the Cabinet meeting to discuss Britain's membership of the EEC, as recorded in his diary (18 March 1975), Against the Tide. Diaries 1973-1976 (London: Hutchinson, 1989), pp. 346-347

• The industrial crisis now facing Britain is far deeper than is generally appreciated; and so therefore the scale and scope of the national industrial strategy needed to overcome it is correspondingly greater. ... It is no exaggeration to say that Britain's whole future depends upon major investment in the expansion and reequipment of our manufacturing plants, aimed at restoring British industry to a competitive position in world and home markets. Such an investment programme will be a huge and lengthy task. It would involve us as a nation in spending some £6,000m a year on capital investment in manufacturing, double what we have been spending.
  • Article for Trade and Industry, quoted in The Times (4 April 1975), p. 1

• He has a deep contempt for Britain, the British people and parliamentary democracy. He is trying to climb back to power via the Treaty of Rome, and put Britain under government from Brussels for ever. In 1970 Mr Heath solemnly promised that he would not take Britain into the Common Market without the full-hearted consent of the British people. He broke his pledged word then, and he now says he will not accept a 'No' vote on Thursday. Heath promised more jobs and higher living standards inside the EEC. These promises were all broken, and he now tells us we are so poor we cannot come out; beggars can't be choosers. That is false, too. Heath's leadership has been a total disaster for the British people. The Tory Party threw him out.
  • Speech at an anti-EEC rally (3 June 1975), quoted in 'Heath attack by Mr Benn', The Times (4 June 1975), p. 6

• Through me the energy policy of the whole Common Market is being held up. Without opening old wounds, it pleases me no end.
  • On not attending an EEC meeting in order to attend a Labour rally (12 December 1975), quoted in 'Mr Benn delays EEC meeting', The Times (13 December, 1975), p. 1

• When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.
  • On Independent Radio News (12 November 1976), quoted in The Times (13 November 1976), p. 2

• 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.
  • As quoted in Yorkshire Post (22 November 1976)

• It is an indisputable historical fact...that Marxism has, from the earliest days, always been openly accepted by the party as one of many sources of inspiration within our movement, along with—though much less influential than—Christian Socialism, Fabianism, Owenism, trade unionism, or even radical Liberalism. Marxism is not synonymous with communism and it is not true that there is growing up in the Labour Party a dominant group which believes in violent revolution, the one-party state and suppression of democratic rights.
  • Statement for Labour's National Executive Committee in defence of Andy Bevan, a Marxist who had been appointed Labour's National Youth Officer, quoted in The Times (16 December 1976), p. 14

• If Parliament, public and press have now braced themselves to accept the plain and obvious truth that Cabinet discussions are interesting, vigorous and sometimes revolve around alternative policies, why should even the disclosure of an outline of the points at issue—while these discussions are in progress—be guarded against so relentlessly and so ineffectively from any risk of publicity? ... Secrecy in decision-making does not occur by accident or default. It is because knowledge is power, and no government willingly gives up power to the Commons, the public, or anyone else. Open government would disclose more about the processes of decision-making, including the workings of the Cabinet committee system, reveal the roles of officials and advisers, and involve both admitting and encouraging pressure upon ministers. ... If parliamentary democracy is, as I believe, a unique system of government, partly because it allows us to learn from our own mistakes in time to correct them, the raw material of that experience must be made available in time to use it for that purpose.
  • Speech to a Press Gallery luncheon (14 February 1977), quoted in The Times (15 February 1977), p. 4

• North Sea oil could be a mask which conceals the decline of our economy. Don't think it will necessarily solve our problems. Britain was in a process of de-industrialization and it was essential that the revenue from oil should be used for reinvestment in industry. I have seen industry after industry in this country upon which our living standards rest going down because of the lack of investment. I have seen it in shipbuilding, aircraft, machine tools, the motor industry, motor cycles and electronics. Public investment and ownership were critical parts of the recovery of a society whose living standards and public service rested upon manufacturers.
  • Speech to the annual conference of the London Co-operative Society's Political Committee (16 October 1977), quoted in The Times (17 October 1977), p. 17

• ...the Opposition [Conservative Party] have consistently resisted, from the time when they were in office until now, any extension of British control over oil in the North Sea. ... The development of the North Sea is going on apace. But we believe that it is right that the British people should have a growing share in the benefits of the North Sea. ... It passes my understanding why a party which used to pretend to speak for the national interest should regularly denounce any extension of British control and ownership of the oil in the continental shelf.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (5 April 1978)

• He said he did not approach the EMS proposal in a theological way. In his view the West German Government wanted it in order to cripple their competitors; the French wanted it because they wished to be equal to the Germans; and the EEC commissioners wanted it because they believed in a federal Europe. "It would mean that a British government could only get permission to devalue, if we wanted to, if we made big cuts in public expenditure. It would be quite impossible to implement Labour's Programme, 1976 and party conference decisions if we went into EMS. We ought to make it clear...that we are not prepared to go into it and we would veto it if it was not in the national interest."
  • Remarks during the joint meeting of the Cabinet and the Labour Party National Executive Committee (23 October 1978), quoted in The Times (24 October 1978), p. 1

• More and more communists are coming to realize that socialism without democracy is no socialism at all. ... I believe that the next decade will see the growth in democratic socialism against the ideas of monetarism and corporation.
  • Speech to the European Republic Committee at the American Club in London (25 October 1978), quoted in The Times (26 October 1978), p. 5

1980s

• I think that having 24 people around the Cabinet table whose future depends upon maintaining the good will of one man is fundamentally undemocratic and it would be far better if Cabinet ministers were accountable to the Parliamentary Labour Party.
  • Interview for London Weekend Television's Weekend World, quoted in The Times (11 February 1980), p. 2

• People who have 'come out' in the last two or three years by their own action make themselves vulnerable in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion caused by rising unemployment. ... The present inequality relating among other things to the definition of privacy, the differing ages of consent, the exclusion of the Armed Services and the Merchant Navy cannot be justified and must be completely swept away from the statute books.
  • Speech to the launching of the National Council for Civil Liberties' booklet Gay Workers: Trade Unions and the Law (27 January 1981), quoted in The Times (28 January 1981), p. 4

• The Peasants' Revolt came as feudalism was breaking down in Britain, just as capitalism is breaking down today. Mass unemployment, the destruction of the welfare state, the health service and comprehensive education, would not be accepted, any more than would nuclear weapons based on British soil. We will not be satisfied until there is justice in Ireland. We will not allow the House of Lords to prevent us from doing what we want to do, nor the Community in Brussels, nor American generals in the Pentagon to decide what our future can be. The only way we can change Britain and the world is when working people gather together and decide whether they will change it. When we have decided we will change it, no power on earth can stop us.
  • Speech in Blackheath (4 May 1981) to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Peasants' Revolt, quoted in The Times (5 May 1981), p. 2

• The Poles have had the courage to stand up to the Kremlin. The British people must now stand up to the Pentagon and close all their nuclear bases here.
  • Speech to a CND rally (24 October 1981), quoted in Jad Adams, Tony Benn (Macmillan, 1992), p. 420

• The violence of the press attacks on Aslef, and the sustained and bitter hostility of the media towards the Labour movement is responsible for the refusal to handle some newspapers on the railways. Day after day Fleet Street conducts its campaign against working people, ignoring their interests, distorting their arguments and abusing their representatives. Working journalists can no longer evade their moral responsibilities by shielding behind their editors, nor editors by shielding behind their proprietors. Nor can arguments based on the freedom of the press be used as an excuse to deny freedom of expression to millions of people who have lost their jobs, suffered cuts in living standards or in essential health and education services.
  • Speech to the press (26 January 1982), quoted in The Times (27 January 1982), p. 1

• [Journalists tell me:] "I didn't write the headline; the editor told me to say that. I will lose my job if I put it differently". But journalists were not exempted from what was happening in society. Their role could be likened to the Jews in Dachau who herded other Jews into the gas chambers.
  • Speech to the press (26 January 1982), quoted in The Times (27 January 1982), p. 1

• It is wholly wrong to blame Marx for what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in his,
  • The Benn Heresy (1982).

• I think the SDP really is a very right-wing party. In a funny way it’s more right-wing than Mrs. Thatcher because Mrs. Thatcher is an old-fashioned liberal, if you know what I mean, she believes in market forces and small government. But my knowledge and experience of the SDP is that they believe in a centralised system, they believe in a federal Europe in which we would only be a province under Brussels, they believe in retaining the American bases, they want a statutory pay policy so they would govern the wages of everybody without proper negotiation. I think they're a very hard right party and I think the Labour Party which has now got a decent policy as a result of all the work we’ve done is going to pick up a lot of support this year.
  • Afternoon Plus on ITN (29 January 1982)

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

• I tell the Prime Minister that this is an ill-thought-out enterprise and will not achieve the purposes to which it is put.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (7 April 1982) on the Falklands War

• 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.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (29 April 1982) on the Falklands War

• He (John Ball) was preaching socialism long before Marx, Stalin or Brezhnev. He said things would not go well for England until all property was held in common. He was hanged, they cut his stomach out and he was drawn and quartered, his body cut into four pieces. That was the way they treated the Militant Tendency in 1381.
  • Speech during the Mitcham and Morden by-election, quoted in The Times (3 June 1982), p. 12

• The House of Commons represents only one third of the legislative structure, which under our unwritten constitution consists of the 'Queen in Parliament' within which the Crown prerogatives and the real powers of the House of Lords still play a significant part. Only the House of Commons represents the people and it is the only democratic arena in which Labour can win a majority. ... The fact is that the British constitution, parliamentary system and machinery of government are far from democratic in both theory and practice and they are full of obstacles for those who want to use them to bring about reform by democratic means. The Crown prerogatives, most of which are exercised by ministers, confer immense powers which can, if abused, frustrate the wishes of the electorate. ... The use of either prerogative power in a controversial manner in Britain would draw the monarchy into the heart of the political debate.
  • Article for New Socialist quoted in The Times (27 August 1982), p. 2

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

• The general election of 1983 has produced one important result that has passed virtually without comment in the media. It is that, for the first time since 1945, a political party with an openly socialist policy has received the support of over eight and a half million people. This is a remarkable development by any standards and it deserves some analysis … the 1983 Labour manifesto commanded the loyalty of millions of voters and a democratic socialist bridge-head in public understanding and support can be made.
  • The Guardian (20 June 1983).

• People say that if we work for the Single European Act, women will get their rights, the water will be purer, and training will be better. That is rubbish. It is part of the attempt to consolidate the EEC.
  • Speech to the House of Commons (23 February 1989)

• It would be inconceivable for the House to adjourn for Easter without recording the fact that last Friday the High Court disallowed an Act which was passed by this House and the House of Lords and received Royal Assent — the Merchant Shipping Act 1988. The High Court referred the case to the European Court...I want to make it clear to the House that we are absolutely impotent unless we repeal Section 2 of the European Communities Act. It is no good talking about being a good European. We are all good Europeans; that is a matter of geography and not a matter of sentiment. Are the arrangements under which we are governed such that we have broken the link between the electorate and the laws under which they are governed? I am an old parliamentary hand — perhaps I have been here too long — but I was brought up to believe, and I still believe, that when people vote in an election they must be entitled to know that the party for which they vote, if it has a majority, will be able to enact laws under which they will be governed. That is no longer true. Any party elected, whether it is the Conservative party or the Labour party can no longer say to the electorate, "Vote for me and if I have a majority I shall pass that law", because if that law is contrary to Common Market law, British judges will apply Common Market law.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (13 March 1989) on the Factortame case

1990s

• I have five questions that I ask people who have power, and I recommend them to the House. If I see someone who is powerful, be it a traffic warden, Rupert Murdoch, the head of a trade union or a Member of Parliament, I ask myself these five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How can we get rid of you?" That last question is crucial. We cannot get rid of Jacques Delors; we cannot get rid of the [European] Commission. We can get rid of a Government; but we cannot get rid of European legislation that a Government have entrenched during their period in office—be they a Labour Government with the Tories coming or the other way around.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (21 May 1990)

• The Labour party believes in the traditional values of society—in the idea that we have responsibilities one to another and that we are not just greedy all the time, looking out only for ourselves. Without being personal, the philosophy that has been propagated over the past 10 years has been wicked and evil...to set man against man, woman against woman and country against country and to build on nationalism and racism...and all the damage that has been done by the Conservatives has been disgraceful...I have a measure called the Margaret Thatcher (Global Repeal) Bill...It would be easy to reverse the policies and replace the personalities—the process has begun—but the rotten values that have been propagated from the platform of political power in Britain during the past 10 years will be an infection—a virulent strain of right-wing capitalist thinking which it will take time to overcome.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (22 November 1990) on the day Margaret Thatcher announced her intention to resign.

• All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (28 February 1991)

• If democracy is destroyed in Britain it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (20 November 1991) during a debate on the Treaty of Maastricht.

• The word 'socialism' on my poster has not lost me a single vote. People will support you if you're serious. My complaint about the Labour movement is that it hasn't done any teaching for 40 years; it has always been on the defensive. Thatcher was successful because she was a teacher. Her values, of course, were rotten.
  • Remarks during the general election campaign, quoted in The Times (3 April 1992), p. 12

• The plain fact is that every single policy that has been attempted by British cabinets has failed — partition, Stormont, power sharing, direct rule, internment without trial, "supergrass" trials, CS gas, strip searching, even the Anglo-Irish Agreement. ... I have long held the view that what we are discussing is not so much an Irish problem as a British problem in Northern Ireland. ... The real problem can be traced to the continued British presence in Northern Ireland. ... by the end of the century I believe Britain will have withdrawn from Northern Ireland just as it has done from so many colonies in the past.
  • 'They are Britain's troubles', The Times (27 October 1993), p. 16

• Had a long talk to the Chinese First Secretary at the embassy — a very charming man called Liao Dong — and said how much I admired Mao Tse tung or Zedong, the greatest man of the twentieth century. He said that I couldn't admire Mao more than he did. I asked him how Mao was viewed now. He said Mao was 70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong; the Cultural Revolution didn't work. He said he had been named after Mao — it was amusing.
  • Journal entry for 6 June 1996 in Free at Last!: Diaries, 1991-2001 (2003) p. 371

• On 24 October 1945...the United Nations charter was passed. The words of that charter are etched on my mind and move me even as I think of them. It says: "We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our life-time has brought untold sorrow to mankind." That was that generation's pledge to this generation, and it would be the greatest betrayal of all if we voted to abandon the charter, take unilateral action and pretend that we were doing so in the name of the international community.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (17 February 1998) during a debate on Iraq

• 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.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (16 November 1998)

• Having served for nearly half a century in the House of Commons, I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so.
  • Paul Waugh, "Benn retires to spend more time with his politics", The Independent, 28 June 1999, p. 5.

2000s

Multinational companies now aim to run the world... by buying both political parties in America and expecting a pay-off whichever one wins — and that is totally anti-democratic.

• We have been in recess since July, and during that time there have been a fuel crisis, a Danish no vote, the collapse of the Euro and a war in the middle east, but what is our business tomorrow? The Insolvency Bill [Lords]. It ought be called the Bankruptcy Bill [Commons], because we play no role.
  • Speech in the House of Commons (23 October 2000), cited in Adam Tomkins, "What is Parliament for?" in Bamforth N. and Leyland P. (eds.), Public Law in a Multi-Layered Constitution, Oxford, Hart, 2003, p. 53.

The danger is very great because the power is so overwhelming and the American capacity to bully, bribe and blackmail people into going along with their wars is something you mustn’t underestimate.

• The big question today is 'Will globalisation allow democracy to survive?' On one side we have the multinationals, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. I want to help to redress the balance on the other side.
  • Interview with Andrew Walker (10 March 2001), quoted in BBC News, 'Tony Benn: End of an era' (10 March 2001)

• 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.
  • Interview with Andrew Walker (10 March 2001), quoted in BBC News, 'Tony Benn: End of an era' (10 March 2001)

• 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.
  • 'The Levellers and the Tradition of Dissent' (1 June 2001)

• 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...
  • Tony Benn interview: Hope is the key, Share International Foundation (January 2003).

• 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 interview: Hope is the key, Share International Foundation (January 2003).

• 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.

• 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 interview “Hope is the key, Share International” (January 2003)

• I think people have to have some feeling that they have some role in shaping their own future and that they are not just spectators on the [lives] of kings, presidents, prime ministers and so on which is on the whole what modern democracies — America, Britain, Europe — tend to do. They turn people into spectators. Spectators who can be bought by clever advertising to appear to support [the people] — but once they’ve granted their support then they’re expected just to sit back for five years and watch the great and the good they’ve elected governing the country. That is not democratic in the proper sense, but it’s better than not being able to get rid of people who govern you. So it’s a very imperfect democracy: it has no industrial elements, no democracy in the media or business, and not necessarily much democracy in education. The conclusion I’ve reached over the years is that democracy is the most controversial idea. Nobody in power wants democracy. The Pope didn’t want it: he picks all the cardinals. The Church of England doesn’t have it because the Prime Minister picks the leader. Stalin didn’t like it. Hitler didn’t like it, New Labour doesn’t like it. They just want to use an idea to control.
  • Tony Benn interview “Hope is the key, Share International” (January 2003)

• 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 interview “Hope is the key, Share International” (January 2003)

• My Great-grandfather was a Congregational Minister and my Mother was a Bible scholar, and I was brought up on the Bible, that the story of the Bible was conflict between the kings who had power, and the prophets who preached righteousness. And I was taught to believe in the prophets, got me into a lot of trouble. And my Dad said to me when I was young, "Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone, Dare to have a purpose firm, Dare to let it (be) known."
  • Interviewed by Kevin Zeese in 'Counterpunch', December 19, 2005.

• [The Labour Party]'s never been a socialist party, but it's always had socialists in it, just as there are some Christians in the Church, it's an exact parallel.
  • Today Programme (10 February 2006).

• 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.
  • Question Time (22 March 2007).

• Ideas are more powerful than guns.
  • Wikinews interview with Tony Benn (8 August 2007), quote from approx 24min45 sec into interview.

• If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.
  • Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).

• An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.
  • Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).

• I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralize them.
  • Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).

• People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote. They always say that that everyone should vote but I think that if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people that represented their interests there would be a real democratic revolution.
  • Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).

• Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose.
  • Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).

• I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.
  • Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).

• The way change occurs to begin with, if you come up with a good idea, like heathcare, you're ignored. If you go on you must be mad, absolutely stark-staring bonkers. If you go on after that you're dangerous. Then, if the pressure keeps up there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made.
  • Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007) Probably derived from older version:
• 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.
  • 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

• When you think of the number of men in the world who hate each other, why, when two men love each other, does the church split?
  • On the same-sex marriage controversy in the Church of England.
  • "Tony Benn: The glorious revolutionary", The Journal (26 March 2008).

• 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.
  • Interview in Creating Freedom (2013).

• I never liked meat - and my son Hilary, 30 years ago, said, 'If the world ate the grain instead of feeding it to animals and killing them, there would be enough food for everybody,'
  • Jeremy Corbyn and other famous vegetarian politicians, BBC News, 5 September 2017