Tony Benn - Was a politician and diarist that I have long admired. I found his ethos about politics and who politicians should serve to be inspirational. Tony Benn was a disarming individual as well as a politician with real political integrity and blessed with an unbridled sense of fairness. The world is a poorer place for his loss.
Tony said in his book 'Letters to my grand children.' As
a diarist I have chronicled the time through which I have lived in
meticulous detail: but all that is history. What matters now is the
future for those who will live through it. The past is the past but
there may be lessons to be learned which could help the next generation
to avoid mistakes their parents and grandparents made. Certainly at my
age I have learned an enormous amount from the study of history - not so
much from the political leaders of the time but from those who
struggled for justice and explained the world in a way that shows the
continuity of history and has inspired me to do my work. Normality for
any individual is what the world is like on the day they are born. The
normality of the young is wholly different from the normality of their
grandparents. It is the disentangling of the real questions from the day
to day business of politics that may make sense for those who take up
the task as they will do. Every generation has to fight the same battles
as their ancestors had to fight, again and again, for there is no final
victory and no final defeat. Two flames have burned from the beginning
of time - the flame of anger against injustice and the flame of hope. If
this book serves its purpose it will fan both flames.
Tony Benn "After the war people said, 'If you can plan for war, why can't you plan for peace?' When I was 17, I had a letter from the government saying, 'Dear Mr. Benn, will you turn up when you're 17 1/2? We'll give you free food, free clothes, free training, free accommodation, and two shillings, ten pence a day to just kill Germans.' People said, well, if you can have full employment to kill people, why in God's name couldn't you have full employment and good schools, good hospitals, good houses?"
Tony RIP.
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