1. The spirit of ’45. A pivotal point in the film, and in
Benn’s life, is the historic moment of 1945: the end of war and the hopeful
election of a Labour government which would go on to create the NHS, build large
numbers of council houses, nationalise industries and provide the opening
chapter in the story of a post-war boom, characterised above all by full
employment, that would last until the 1970s.
The
importance of the post-war settlement is illustrated in the film by the context
of what preceded it: mass unemployment and squalor in the 1930s, the rise of
fascism in much of Europe, and the contradictory experiences of wartime. It
powerfully illustrates why, for example, the birth of the NHS was such a momentous
advance for anyone who had been poor.
1945 was
one of the turning points in British history and the 1945-51 government was in
fact the only Labour government that delivered meaningful and serious reforms
for working class people. The Wilson governments of 1964-70 – in which Benn
served – benefited from being during the boom years, but their achievements
were of smaller scale, and their contradictions more pronounced, than Attlee’s
government. To a large extent the Labour Party has relied on the advances of
those years to maintain credibility ever since,
but with diminishing success.
After
watching the film it occurred to me that three particular aspects of those
years really made a material difference to working class people’s lives: the
NHS, housing and full employment. Labour can take a lot of credit for the first
two, though the needs of post-war society were such that there were few other
options. Full employment was both a legacy of the war years – when people were
put to work for the war effort – and a feature of the conditions of healthy
economic growth that survived long beyond the Attlee years. This is what
underpinned much of what characterised British society until the crisis of the
1970s, including the confidence of workers to strike for better pay and other
improvements.
But there
was also a darker side to the 1945 government, which is particularly
highlighted in the film by Benn’s criticism of Attlee for secretively pursuing
programmes for the creation of nuclear weapons, in close association with the
newly dominant imperialist power across the Atlantic. Benn had a keen interest
in many foreign policy matters and desire for peace even in his younger, more
moderate days. The film relates how he was, for example, an enthusiastic
supporter of the Movement for Colonial Freedom and the whole process of
decolonisation, and an unwavering opponent of nuclear weapons.
2. Moving to the left. It is often said of Benn that he
moved progressively to the left as he grew older, something that is seen as
rare and exceptional. This is largely true, though he was never especially
right-wing Labour to begin with but rather a career politician with a mix of
ideas. What’s often missed, though, is something that comes across in the film:
the leftwards shift happened mostly in one particular decade. At the start of
the 1970s Benn had moved little politically since 20 years earlier when he had
entered the Commons. By the end of that decade he was essentially the
implacable left-winger we are all familiar with.
Such a
political shift cannot be reduced mechanically to objective circumstances.
Different individuals can react to the same events in quite different ways.
Nonetheless, there are two major contexts which frame Benn’s political shift.
The first
of these is the upsurge in popular rebellions and especially workers’ struggles
between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, including the miners’ strikes of 1972
and 1974 - the latter triggered the fall of Heath’s Tory government - and the
occupation by the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (there’s footage of Benn addressing
a Clydeside rally of the time in ‘Will and Testament’). These clearly
influenced Benn’s move to the left, together with an increasing focus on what
happened outside parliament as significant for the left.
The second
influential factor was Benn’s own highly frustrating experience of being in
office. As a Cabinet Minister in the Labour governments of 1974-79 under Harold
Wilson and then Jim Callaghan, he had insider knowledge of how Labour
politicians were subservient to the dictates of the IMF and big business. He
was incapable of making even mild reforms. Such an experience normally shifts a
Labour politician further to the right – as they rationalise their own situation
as a means of coping with it – but the film reveals how it had the opposite
effect on Benn (something that is also conveyed by his Diaries from that era).
On leaving
office in 1979, with the election of Thatcher’s first government, Benn had
moved to a firmly left-wing political stance and became the leading figure in
the Labour Left. From the 1980s onwards he devoted a lot of time to
extra-parliamentary struggles, speaking on campaign and labour movement
platforms. A final shift would take place after leaving parliament in 2001,
when he really did ‘spend more time on politics’ and dedicated himself
overwhelmingly to championing struggles outside Westminster’s confines.
3. Democracy beyond Westminster. Perhaps the most compelling thing of
all about Benn is the paradox that he spent half a century in the House of
Commons, yet he increasingly gave priority to struggles and movements outside
Parliament and used his profile to promote and champion them. This process
began in the early 1970s, when he was in opposition and there was a wave of
workers’ militancy, but it became more pronounced in the 1980s.
The
Miners’ Strike was a whole year in which Benn dedicated himself to the cause of
supporting the miners, their families and communities. He spoke in public
around 200 times during the course of the Strike, and his devotion to the
miners’ heroic struggle is of course a big part of why in later years he always
got a great reception at the annual Durham Miners’ Gala, one of the places
where he seemingly felt most at home and one of the locations for filming in
‘Will and Testament’.
The
mid-1980s must have also been the time when Benn reluctantly realised that the
Labour Party was not going to be won for the Left, and an excessive focus on
internal battles would be unproductive (though he remained loyal to the Party
to the end, and never entirely abandoned hope in it). He had been the
figurehead in the early 1980s for the Labour left, the great hope for many
socialists who did indeed get swallowed up inside the Labour Party and in
fruitless battles over resolutions and democratic procedures. He stood firm
against the Party’s drift to the right, beginning under the hapless and
hopeless Neil Kinnock (seeing him on the big screen reminded me what a pitiful
character he was), becoming over time an inspiration to many people beyond the
Labour Party as well as the diminishing numbers of principled socialists within
it.
His
outspoken opposition to the Gulf War in the early 1990s prefigured his later
energetic commitment to anti-war campaigning from 2001 onwards. His role in the
Stop the War movement, following the commencement of the ‘war on terror’ in
2001, put his talents, especially as an orator, to magnificent use – the film
includes some of his famous passionate attack on the BBC’s refusal to broadcast
the emergency appeal for Gaza, which gives a flavour of his political
eloquence. His anti-war role was surely his most important practical
contribution in later years. He spoke on many other campaigning platforms, too,
and devoted much time to touring the country and talking about socialist ideas
at packed public events.
One thing
Benn expressed powerfully when interviewed for the film was his conclusion that
democracy is much bigger and broader than what happens in Westminster, and that
real change comes from mass action and determined campaigning. Commitment to
democratic principles and reform was in fact a thread running through his life,
but in the end he had more radical sense of democracy and how it conflicts with
the wealth and power of those who will preserve capitalism at any cost.
Benn said
he would be content if his epitaph was, simply, ‘he encouraged us’. This seems
to have reflected recognition that change will be won people’s own actions, not
principally by the politicians in Westminster.
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