Tony Benn Quotes

I pledge no fudge of compromise', said Arthur Scargill, 'and no carrots of redundancy'. That would make a nice epitaph for him. 'He pledged no fudge'.

I try to operate on two unconnected levels. One on the practical level of action in which I am extremely cautious and conservative. The second is the realm of ideas where I try to be very free

The Establishment decided Thatcher's ideas were safer with a strong Blair government than with a weak Major government. We are given all these personalities to choose between to disguise the fact that the policies are the same.

Well, it all began with Democracy. Before we had the vote all the power was in the hands of rich people. If you had money you could get health care, education, look after yourself when you were old, and what democracy did was to give the poor the vote and it moved power from the marketplace to the polling station, from the wallet ... to the ballot.

Britain's continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation

Middle class Labour leaders are recaptured by the establishment when they die.

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.

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

It is obvious I shall have to abandon my hopes of getting the Queen's head off the stamps.

It is government policy to phase out subsidies to nationalised industries. In line with this, the government hopes that the coal industry will be able to operate without the need for assistance apart from social grants.

I don't make mistakes. I make predictions which immediately turn out to be wrong.

Clare Short, who today poses as an anti-war warrior but was six years ago Blair's cheerleader-in-chief for bombing Yugoslavia. After the attack on Radio-Televizija Jugoslavenska she said, 'The propaganda machine is prolonging the war and it's a legitimate target'. Amnesty International pointed out 'intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects is a war crime under the Rome Statutes of the International Criminal Court'.

A letter today from a Mrs Gladys Freeman, 45 Sebastopol Terrace, Blackpool. 'Sir, reference the room you had here during the party conference season. Well, we know what it is. We know who done it. But for heaven's sake tell us where it is!

You can't have an economic structure worldwide whereby capital can move but labour can't, and if you're going to follow this, then labour must be able to come to wherever it's more profitable. These are the people that are being kept out by the Asylum Bill, on the grounds that they are economic migrants and all of that, but of course all the money that's invested abroad is economic migrant money.

When I think of Cool Britannia I think of old people dying of hypothermia.

Of course, Mao made his mistakes, because everybody does, but at least he allowed working people to smoke, even in the most trying circumstances, such as when, for one reason or another, they found themselves up before the firing squad.

Marxism is now a world faith and must be allowed to enter into a continuous dialogue with other world faiths, including religious faiths

Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.

Encouragement is the most important thing in the world for young people, rather than league tables, which demoralise everyone.

There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.

Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don't have the freedom to choose.

Undoubtedly the war with Iraq was a tragedy. I think it was also a crime.

Clement Attlee, who looked like a sadistic sanitary inspector...

Through me the energy policy of the whole Common Market is being held up. Without opening old wounds, it pleases me no end.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

It's the same each time with progress. 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.

When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.

If I rescued a child from drowning, the press would no doubt headline the story: 'Benn grabs child

The flag of radicalism which has been hoisted in Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one that fluttered 25 years ago over Dachau and Belsen

I think Mrs Thatcher did more damage to democracy, equality, internationalism, civil liberties, freedom in this country than any other Prime Minister this century. When the euphoria surrounding her departure subsides you will find that in a year or two's time there will not be a Tory who admits ever supporting her. People in the street will say, thank God she's gone

If the Queen can reject the advice of a minister on a little thing like a postage stamp, what would happen if she rejected the advice of the Prime Minister on a major matter? If the Crown personally can reject advice, then, of course, the whole democratic facade turns out to be false

I think the truth is that the Labour Party isn't believed any more because people suspect it will say anything to get votes. The rebuilding of some radical alternatives to Thatcherism - and by that I mean all-party Thatcherism - will require us to do some very difficult things

Some of the jam we thought was for tomorrow, we've already eaten

The Tory party is the enemy of democracy.

I've had a very full life, and I've enjoyed it very much. I've learned a great deal and feel indebted to all the people who have worked so hard.

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.

If democracy is ever to be threatened, it will not be by revolutionary groups burning government offices and occupying the broadcasting and newspaper offices of the world. It will come from disenchantment, cynicism and despair caused by the realisation that the New World Order means we are all to be managed and not represented.

Although socialism is widely held by the establishment to be outdated, the things that are most popular in British society today are little pockets of socialism, where areas of life have been excluded from the crude operation of market forces and are protected for the benefit of the community

I can't go to bed if I haven't done my diary. I always record them just as I've always recorded all my interviews and speeches.

The one thing that is absolutely essential is that there shouldn't be any governmental control [of the media] directly or indirectly.

Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is

It is tempting to deny, but if you deny you confirm what you won't deny.

No medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister has in his or her hands. Nor does any American President have power approaching this

The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.

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

It is not surprising that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is no longer an instrument that will secure political solutions ... They can see that the parliamentary democracy we boast of is becoming a sham.

My day rotates around my family. I am very lucky.

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.

Thanks to the tabloid campaigns I have many death threats and I was very pleased to get another one the other day.

The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it - a bit like Christians in the Church of England.

Change always follows the same pattern. If you come up with something new they try and put you off.If that doesn't work they call you stark raving bonkers.If that doesn't work they lock you up like the suffragettes.Then, after a pause, the change happensand you can't find anyone that doesn't claim to have been fighting for it with you.

I believe the more difficult the circumstances, the more people will be inclined to trust those in charge at the moment.

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.

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.

The Civil Service is a bit like a rusty weathercock. It moves with opinion then it stays where it is until another wind moves it in a different direction

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

People would do well to ask themselves how many of their ambitions and aspirations derive from the type of economic system they inhabit and the insecurity and exhaustion it creates, and question the sense and purpose of a society where control of a large portion of life is abdicated under contract in the labour market, and where immense creativity and potential is stifled by the need to do difficult and repetitive tasks in order to earn a wage.

You have to try to build support around causes. It is uniting to campaign on a single issue, and it is never just a single issue; it's always more than that.

I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so.

I did not enter the Labour Party 47 years ago to have our manifesto written by Dr Mori, Dr Gallup and Mr Harris

We used to have a War Office, but now we have a Ministry of Defence, nuclear bombs are now described as deterrents, innocent civilians killed in war are now described as collateral damage and military incompetence leading to US bombers killing British soldiers is cosily described as friendly fire. Those who are in favour of peace are described as mavericks and troublemakers, whereas the real militants are those who want the war.

If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.

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.

The present combination of corporate or commercial control theoretically answerable to politically appointed Boards of Governors is not in any sense a democratic enough procedure to control the power the broadcasters have.

I've got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don't feel anyone listens to them.

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?

I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.

At the end of my life, I was told to vote for it for pensioners; I' m not in favour of means tests for pensioners or anybody.

When I was seven I got dressed up as a city gent and walked into the Bank of England shouting ' fuck the Pound'.

The way a government treats refugees is very instructive ...

I opposed the Suez war, I opposed the Falklands war. I opposed the Libyan bombing and I opposed the Gulf war and I never believed that any of those principled arguments lost a single vote - indeed, I think they gained support though that was not why you did it. What has been lacking in Labour politics over a long period is a principled stand

I don't want to commit myself in advocating a definite republican constitution which will get bogged down with the question of who would elect the President and when.

I'm not frightened about death. I don't know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that's it. And you can't do anything about it.

Cabinet members are soon overwhelmed by the insistent demands of running their departments. On the whole, a period in high office consumers intellectual capital; it does not create it ... The less ministers know at the outset, the more dependent they are on the only sources of available knowledge; the permanent officials.

I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner

The nature of the economic system should be a matter for public choice, and free market capitalism should not be accepted without any discussion of the rich variety of alternatives ... Unlike civil laws, economic laws are imposed on people with all the authority of immutable laws of nature. But the economy is created by people, supported by government intervention, regulation, statute and subsidy, and implemented in such a way that it gives substantial wealth and power to a privileged few, while the majority face a life of relentless work, stress and periodic financial insecurity.

Someone comes every morning at nine o'clock to see if I am still alive. I do get lonely, yes, but I have the children who come and see me. I see all my children every week, and there are the grandchildren, too.

Workers are not going to be fobbed off with a few shares ... or by a carbon copy of the German system of co-determination.

When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don't like it you can change it.

I think if you're going to be committed to doing anything, you really have to care about it, and I suppose that is a romantic idea.

I've made every mistake - but mistakes are how you learn.

He referred to Aneurin Bevan as 'Urinal' Bevan. As for the working classes, they couldn't write their own names in shit on a lavatory wall. I said I thought they could.

By the end of his sixteen-course meal in Buckingham Palace, Ramsay McDonald discovered he had changed his mind about the workers owning the means of production. From now on, he felt it better that the Dukes and Duchesses should continue to own the means of production. The workers would just have to make do with what was left over.

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.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

When you get to No 10, you've climbed there on a little ladder called 'the status quo'. And when you are there, the status quo looks very good

An MP is the only job where you have 70,000 employers, and only one employee.

She believes in something. It is an old-fashioned idea

The people who have sacrificed their view in order to get to the top have very often left no footprints in the sands of time.

Making mistakes is how you learn.

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.