Tony Benn, veteran Labour politician, dies aged 88
Source: The Guardian
Benn was a divisive figure within the Labour party because of his steadfast support for traditional socialism. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Tributes poured in for one the country's most extraordinary and controversial MPs, who, in what he described as the blazing autumn of his career outside Westminster, came to be regarded as an anti-establishment voice for democracy.
Although he said self-deprecatingly in one of his later interviews: "All political careers end in failure; mine just happened to end earlier than most," many regarded his final decades outside Westminster with greatest affection.
In a statement his children Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua said: "It is with great sadness that we announce that our father Tony Benn died peacefully early this morning at his home in west London surrounded by his family.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/14/tony-benn-dies-aged-88-labour-politiican?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
Formerly Lord Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party politician who was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 50 years and a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.
Benn's campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963.[2] In the Labour Government of 1964–1970 he served first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as a notably "technocratic" Minister of Technology. In the period when the Labour Party was in Opposition, for a year he was the Chairman of the Labour Party. In the Labour Government of 1974–1979 he returned to the Cabinet, initially as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy, retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister. During the Labour Party's time in Opposition during the 1980s, he was seen as the party's prominent figure on the left, and the term "Bennite" has come to be used in Britain for someone of a more radical left-wing position.[3]
Benn topped several polls as the most popular politician in Britain.[4] He has been described as "one of the few UK politicians to have become more left-wing after holding ministerial office."[5] After leaving Parliament, Benn became involved in the grass-roots politics of demonstrations and meetings, and was the President of the Stop the War Coalition for the last decade. He was a vegetarian from the 1970s until his death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Benn
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When Tony Benn was a Member of Parliament, he would go around with homemade plaques celebrating heroes of democracy, such as suffragette* Emily Wilding Davison, and illegally screw them to the walls. He copped to this during a sitting of Parliament in 2001, saying, "I have put up several plaques—quite illegally, without permission; I screwed them up myself. One was in the broom cupboard to commemorate Emily Wilding Davison, and another celebrated the people who fought for democracy and those who run the House. If one walks around this place, one sees statues of people, not one of whom believed in democracy, votes for women or anything else. We have to be sure that we are a workshop and not a museum."
We could use a bunch more people like him over here.
One more of many reasons why I want to move to the U.K.
