Tony Benn
The Man Of The Year category are notoriously hard to choose any year, but 2003 was different for many reasons. With George Bush in power and Tony Blair constantly by his side pandering to his every whim it was to people who stood up against The War Against Terrorism that stood out as the true heroes of the year. Tony Benn was one such man and a constant reminder of what the Labour Party used to stand for. Designer Magazine caught up with Tony to discuss the war, Tony Blair and the Labour party.
Q: You're down for the Man Of The Year category in
the Best of 2003 issue with George Galloway and Michael Moore. How do you
feel about it?
A: First of all it's very nice, but remember that progress
is always made by political movements never by guys on white horses. The
important thing at my age is to try and encourage people and if by nominating
me you said I encourage people then I'm perfectly happy. I know Michael
Moore and I know George Galloway and I feel that in their own way they
will encourage people too.
Q: The difference between yourself and George and Michael
is that whereas those two attract love and hate in equal measure with yourself
people tend to like you regardless of whether they agree with your politics.
A: Well I try not to make political arguments personal.
It doesn't help and it switches a lot of people off. The real questions:
Will we have peace? Will we have justice? Will we have pensions? Will we
have free education? Will we have public services? .... those are the sort
of things which interest me. I don't think that having a go at individuals
really helps get your point across apart from anything else.
Q: You are really straight talking in your arguments
A: I say what I think, it's much simpler
Q: Huey Newton of the Black Panthers once said that
to really push ideas through you have to truly connect with the people
and show them change on a day to day basis. Would you agree?
A: Sometimes that's true. But even so if you take pre-war
Germany the problem was fascism and Nazi's, I know Hitler was the guy that
played a large part in bringing it about, but it really is about what sort
of society people create. If you look at South Africa for example. Nelson
Mandela didn't end Apartheid, the poor guy was in jail for 27 years, it
was the African people that ended it but he was a symbol of their struggle.
Or Gandhi in India, Gandhi was a great believer in non-violence and he
was in and out of jail, but India became free. I think it's better to look
at what people can do collectively and that's why it's so important to
encourage them.
Q: If you look at the Anti-War movement this year where
the people en mass demonstrated against the war...
A: ...fantastic, i've never seen so many people together
in my life and afterwards someone from the BBC interviewed me and said
"Mr Benn, you're a voice in the wilderness" and I said "Well there are
2 million people in my wilderness so i'm perfectly happy".
What was important was not the platform of speakers, although
there were a lot of interesting speakers, was the fact that people, many
of whom had never thought of going on a demonstration before, turned up
because they wanted it to be known and they wanted to identify with the
piece movement. And it is not just a British Movement, there were 10 million
people who marched all over the world that day in America, Europe, all
over the place. There is a very strong movement for peace and we need these
things to be organized on an international basis because one country by
itself doesn't have that much power.
Q: About 6 months before I was on an Anti-Nazi march
and the difference in the participants as you said was amazing. Every possible
person from every background was on display at the Anti-War marches.
A: That was an indication of the breadth of appeal and
now that Iraq's been invaded they haven't found any weapons of mass destruction,
the whole thing was a complete fraud. That was just an idea cooked up to
win support in the British parliament for what Bush has decided to do anyway,
which was to grab Iraqi oil.
Q: People are seeing through the spin much more easily
nowadays.
A: I think they are actually and I think that's good
news because you do need to reach your own opinions and reach your own
judgement and if you're just subject to propaganda all the time it demoralizes
society as a whole and encourages apathy, not that I think people are apathetic.
I think people are really really angry that they don't think anyone listens
to them and they don't believe what they are told. Anger and mistrust are
not the same as apathy. If you like, they are apathetic about some politicians,
but they are not apathetic about the issues.
Q: Obviously the facts have come out about what happened,
why it happened etc. and 20 years ago these facts would probably have been
covered up and kept secret.
A: I think the internet and websites do make a difference.
I get about 20 emails a day from America describing all the meetings of
trade unions against the war and the peace movement and the number of people
attending. Not a word appears in the press, but sufficient number of people
now, particularly those that are active, have access to the internet so
they don't depend on the BBC or CNN or Fox Channel.
Q: The fact that in this country alone 2 million people
demonstrated and "they" still walked over us to a large extent is terrifying.
A: Oh gosh I say. It's an amazing experience that and
see the BBC don't report speeches broadly. They send a camera there hoping
there will be a punch up, but they don't cover any of the speeches ever
cos the only people that are aloud to speak straight to the camera are
the news commentators. Everyone else is just a puppet in the play they've
scripted .
You've got to realize that first of all the police never
give the true number of people on a demonstration, I've often thought of
setting up a college to teach the police how to count. The second thing
they do is, as I say the media ignore the speeches, and sometime I have
known on occasions where they've been agent provocateurs. I remember once
in Wapping when I was on the Picket line for the Print Workers, somebody
in a balaclava threw a stone and I just happened to watch him and he popped
behind the police lines and a cavalry charge came. I just have a feeling
that when they want to deal with a crowd they create conditions in which
they can argue later they had no alternative.
Q: Earlier in the year you interviewed Saddam Hussein,
the first person in 12 years.
A: I did it in 1990 and I got all the hostages out and
I wanted to hear what he said. I asked him some very straightforward questions
- Do you have WMD? And he said no - and everybody laughed at me when I
came home and said "you're a sucker", but he didn't have any. I asked him
did he have any links with Al Quaeda which I knew he didn't have and he
said no and even Bush now says that he (Saddam) didn't have anything to
do with September 11th.
I'm very glad I went, but you get kicked about if you
do anything that doesn't fit in with the public image. But the man's a
brutal dictator, i've been saying that for years.
Q: As you said people did see the line of questioning
as quite naive.
A: Well, when you're having a diplomatic political discussion
you don't try and do a Jeremy Paxman. I think if journalists were responsible
for international policy we'd have a nuclear war every week. You go there
to find out what he say's, you don't just go there to make him look stupid.
At least people had an opportunity of hearing something before they turned
on his country. However unpopular he was, and he was very unpopular, I
think it's pretty obvious that the Iraqi's find the American occupation
even less so.
Q: Moving onto our life specifically in politics. Today
in the Labour Party is there anyone you can actually relate to at all?
A: Oh gosh yes. I've just been at a Campaign Group that
network with people all over the country and the Labour MP's that are present
at the campaign group are very influential. Each time whether it be the
War last year, hospitals or the question of tuition fees the campaign group
of labour MP's is having a greater and greater influence.
Q: We were speaking to George Galloway a couple of
weeks ago and he believes that there aren't enough people in the Labour
Party with a back bone to bring it back to what it used to mean. How do
you feel about this?
A: He didn't want to be expelled. I went and gave evidence
for him because I thought what he said was quite true, if you go to war
and kill people don't be surprised if people make strong comments. But
i've seen the Labour Party go left and right so many times in my life that
I think we can recover again, I think we have to. But it does depend on
the amount of press that is put to them by people that have a concern with
peace or pensions or student things...they've got to bring pressure to
there and the thing will right itself, but it doesn't happen automatically.
Q: Do you think the Labour Party is a one person party
nowadays?
A: I think he would like to dominate, but I think increasingly
particular after the fiasco with the WMD, more and more people are more
and more alert to the dangers so it's not so easy. But i've no doubt that
many leaders would like to do.
Q: Finally, if we take the possibility that Tony Blairs
career is quite probably going to be over in 2004, who would you consider
to be a great leader for the Labour Party?
A: I'm very reluctant to say and I tell you why. If you
turn it from a debate on peace and pension and tuition fees into a discussion
about who would succeed Tony Blair the media would love it. There would
be weeks and week about the relative merits and demerits of Brown and Straw
and Blunkett and it would suit them fine because they would be able to
ignore the political issues.
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"Tony Benn's Greatest Hits" is out now on CMB International
Various Books are available and Tony Benn regularly
tours through the UK
For more information
www.tonybenn.com
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