I’m a Bennite.

In the last few days, I’ve heard a lot of commentary from Blairites and supporters of the SDP criticising Tony Benn for making the Labour Party unelectable.

I have spent much time listening to all of his audiobooks again and again. Some of the analysis has been spot on: see for example the comments by Steve Richards. But some of it has been quite dreadful.

Tony Benn had a rare gift. Whatever your strong views on how much damage he did, maybe, he was very good at explaining his perspective, and not being ashamed of it. He boasted of talking with Keith Joseph and Enoch Powell, even though he profoundly disagreed with them.

There’s been a lot of ‘his eloquence was brilliant’.

For me, it’s worth saying he was a very good orator, but he had a clear vision. In terms of journalism, his copy was good. That’s why he was a charismatic leader – he had his own vision, and his own followers.

While the old tired arguments are rolled out about how his proposed industrial legislation was unworkable, and how he was in the dock of the unions like a weirdy cult, it cannot be dismissed that there are many who agree with him.

A lot of it can be seen as motherhood and apple pie stuff, but his feelings of solidarity, co-operation and social justice are clear cut.

He could negotiate even the most problematic issues for socialists.

On equality, he said famously on the radio that he did not feel this meant that everybody should be equal; this meant that “obstacles in your journey” should be removed, which would have made even the most erudite of commentators on social mobility blanche. You can hear him voice this comment in person in a programme recently presented by David Davis MP about the political outlook of Benn.

Tony Benn MP was never a member of the Socialist Health Association (SHA). I don’t think he would’ve been ‘sickened’ as such. It’s just that in close to seventy years of his diaries he never mentioned the Socialist Medical Association or SHA once.

I think as far as the SHA is concerned Tony Benn was respectfully indifferent.

Some of the more famous phrases which Benn uses to set out his viewpoint, which some feel produced an unworkable synthesis, I feel demonstrate what would have been his concerns about the modern day policy of the Labour Policy.

I am mindful he does in fact mention Prof Allyson Pollock and Dr Julian Tudor-Hart in his final set of diaries “An autumn blaze of sunshine” as people he likes.

I think he was therefore interested in the future direction of the NHS under Labour, the political party he always supported despite his parents being Liberals. It was his wish that he should see a Labour government next, and in fact he had his diary marked with the date of the 100th birthday he would ultimately never witness.

Tony Benn was not on an advocate of global markets, but rather an advocate of domestic sovereignty. He always believed in the concept of people being to vote out laws legislated for by elected officials. That’s why he resented the European parliament so much.

That’s why what he would thought about Andy Burnham MP going to Strasbourg next month to negotiate an opt out from TTIP is so interesting.

This is simply a personal view, and not meant to represent any views of anyone apart from me.

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

This is directly relevant to all the endless talk, mainly under successive Conservative governments, that the NHS is unsustainable or unaffordable. And yet Benn used to remark often that you never hear of Generals running out of money to bomb citiess.

“In the course of her life, Mrs Thatcher took on half of the British population and tried to coerce them to her will and she did not succeed. But she was a conviction politician, a sign post not a weather cock; but one that I always felt was pointing the wrong way”

Tony Benn is reported as having said that the Labour Party is not inherently socialist, but there are socialists in it, in the same way there are Christians in the Church of England (according to him.) Nye Bevan was indeed a visionary, who has been rarely, if at all, been matched in calibre since. Benn often referred to the ‘spirit of ’45’ in which quite radical visions, such as the founding of the NHS, had been proposed.

“In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. 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.”

Accountability has always been a problem for the top echelons of the NHS, so I wonder what he would have made about the seeming lack of responsibility for disasters such as Mid Staffs. The official line was that it was inappropriate to ‘blame’ anyone for Mid Staffs, and that we should adopt a culture of learning from failure.

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

This, for me, is quite reminiscent of what friends of mine who are no longer on the Central Council of the SHA feel about their own personal continued devotion to a socialist NHS in contradistinction to the progress of the SHA.

Anthony Neil Wedgwood “Tony” Benn, PC (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014)