Download or read book Tony Benn written by Jad Adams and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10-31 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tony Benn has been portrayed as both hero and villain, as a creative and as a destructive force. This comprehensively revised edition of Jad Adams's classic biography, is written with unparalleled access to Benn's private records, and describes the long and turbulent career of one of the most charismatic politicians of the last hundred years. The first biography to have been written with full access to the Benn archives chronicles the behind-the-scenes story of Benn's bitter battles with every leader of the Labour Party since Gaitskell. It details his service in the governments of Wilson and Callaghan, his role as a champion of the left during the Labour Party's long period in opposition, his retirement from Parliament, to spend more time involved in politics in 2001, and his subsequent emergence as a leading figure of the British opposition to the war in Iraq.
Download or read book The Benn Diaries written by Tony Benn and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Benn Diaries, embracing the years 1940-1990, are already established as a uniquely authoritative, fascinating and readable record of political life. The selected highlights that form this single-volume edition include the most notable events, arguments and personal reflections throughout Benn's long and remarkable career as a leading politician. The narrative starts with Benn as a schoolboy and takes the reader through his youthful wartime experiences as a trainee pilot, his nervous excitement as a new MP during Clement Atlee's premiership and the tribulations of Labour in the 1950s, when the Conservatives were in firm control. It ends with the Tories again in power, but on the eve of Margaret Thatcher's fall, while Tony Benn is on a mission to Baghdad before the impending Gulf War. Over the span of fifty years, the public and private turmoil in British and world politics is recorded as Benn himself moves from wartime service to become the baby of the House, Cabinet Minister, and finally the Commons' most senior Labour Member.
Download or read book A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine written by Tony Benn and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this final volume of diaries, Tony Benn reflects on the compensations and the disadvantages of old age. With the support of a small circle of friends and his extended family, he continues his activities on behalf of social justice, peace and accountability in public life, to a background of political change and the international economic crisis. Following an illness in 2009 the diaries, kept for over sixty years, cease. Published here alongside these last diaries are Tony Benn’s highly personal insights into the challenges of old age and failing health, of widowhood,and of moving out of the family home after sixty years. Finally, we share in Tony Benn's hopes for the future based on his years of experience and his natural optimism.
Download or read book The Benn Diaries written by Tony Benn and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-03-23 with total page 807 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tony Benn was one of the twentieth century's most charismatic politicians. The Benn Diaries, kept for almost seventy years, are a uniquely authoritative, fascinating and readable record of the political life of our times. This single-volume edition is the selected highlights of the complete diaries from Tony's schooldays in the 1940s until he ceased keeping a record of his day-to-day thoughts in 2009. The narrative starts with Tony as a schoolboy and takes the reader through his experience as a trainee pilot during the war, his tentative first days as a backbencher in Atlee's post-war government, through his battle to remain in the Commons after the death of his father. From cabinet posts and leadership battles, through election highs ands lows to becoming a retired widower. Tony Benn was a consistently radical voice campaigning for the causes he was passionate about. This volume is the definitive legacy of the best political diarist of our times.
Download or read book Letters To My Grandchildren written by Tony Benn and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Arguments for Democracy written by Tony Benn and published by Jonathan Cape. This book was released on 1981 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kritische analyse van het democratische gehalte van Britse staatsinstellingen, door de radicale Labourpoliticus
Download or read book Arguments for Socialism written by Tony Benn and published by Jonathan Cape. This book was released on 1979 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Free Radical written by Tony Benn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-06 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2001, Tony Benn, one of the most influential socialist politicians in Europe, retired from the British House of Commons after almost 50 years in politics, to 'devote more time to politics'. One of the ways in which he carried out his resolution was to write a series of weekly columns for the Morning Star, a British socialist daily newspaper. These columns reflect the breadth of Benn's political concerns, covering both domestic and international politics, and the best of them have been collected here. Benn writes with a controlled passion about the Labour party (old and new), the threats to democracy and the need for a viable protest movement, and the events and repercussions of September 11, 2001.
Download or read book Hammer of the Left written by John Golding and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We went into the general election with an unelectable leader, in a state of chaos with a manifesto that might have swept us to victory in cloud cuckoo land, but which was held in contempt in the Britain of 1983." It is said that those who do not learn from past mistakes are doomed to repeat them, and though Golding was describing the Labour Party of the early 1980s, he could just as easily have been talking about its situation today. A lurch to the left and a party in turmoil — the ascension of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader will, for many, trigger only unhappy memories of the dark days of the 1970s and '80s, when the party was plagued by a civil war that threatened to end all hopes of re-election. In that battle, moderate elements fought the illiberal hard left for the soul of Labour; that they won, paving the way for later electoral successes, was down to men and women like John Golding. In this visceral, no-holds-barred account, Golding describes how he took on and helped defeat the Militant Tendency and the rest of the hard left, providing not only a vivid portrait of political intrigue and warfare, but a timely reminder for the party of today of the dangers of disunity and of drifting too far from electoral reality.
Download or read book Searching for Socialism written by Leo Panitch and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new and essential history of the Labour new left from Tony Benn to Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn’s rapid ascent to the leadership of the Labour Party, driven by a groundswell of popular support particularly among the young, was met at the time by a baffled media. Just where did Jeremy Corbyn come from? In Searching for Socialism, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys argue that it is only by understanding Corbyn’s roots in the Bennite Labour New Left’s long struggle to transcend the limits of “parliamentary socialism” and democratise the party, as a precondition for democratising the state, can you understand his surge to become leader of the party. Closely analyzing the forces inside the party aligned against Corbyn’s leadership, Panitch and Leys explain what happened between the validation of the Corbyn project in the 2017 election, while advancing an ambitious programme of democratic socialist measures unmatched anywhere since the 1970s, and the electoral defeat amidst the Brexit conjuncture of 2019. They argue that while this defeat marked the farthest point to which the generation formed in the 1970s was able to carry the Labour new left project, it seems unlikely that the new generation of activists will quickly see any other way forward than continuing the struggle inside the Labour Party, so as to fundamentally change it. In the face of the contradictions being generated by twenty-first-century capitalism, and the need for discovering and developing new political forms adequate to addressing them, this book is required reading for democratic socialists, not just in Britain but everywhere.
Download or read book The Benn Heresy written by Alan Freeman and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Out Of The Wilderness written by Tony Benn and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 619 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1963 saw Labour's emergence from its 'wilderness years' in Opposition, and the election of Harold Wilson following the unexpected death of Hugh Gaitskell. In the first Wilson government of 1964 Benn was made Postmaster General and became known as an innovator for his introduction of the Giro and arguing for a radical broadcasting policy. After Labour's landslide victory of 1966 he was appointed to the Cabinet as Minister of Technology, but Labour's honeymoon came to an abrupt end in 1967 with the introduction of devaluation, leading to disilliusionment with the Government. Tony Benn's account on his relations with the industrialists, television and press chiefs, the Palace and the diplomatic world as well as trade unionists, civil servants, and his Cabinet colleagues, reveals the workings of our political and economic systems at the highest level. Out of the Wilderness is a unique political record of the 1960s, told by a man who served in five Labour administrations and who today is one of the most experienced figures both in and out of the House of Commons. 'No-one interested in the political influence of the Crown, the intrigues of the civil service or the highly traditionalist character of Harold Wilson can afford to ignore it' The Observer
Download or read book Conflicts Of Interest written by Tony Benn and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this, the fourth volume of Tony Benn’s diaries, the Labour Government continues its fight for survival. Important developments are occurring both at home and internationally. In Britain, Benn as Secretary of State for Energy is directly involved with Windscale and decisions about nuclear power and oil policy. Abroad, the Government is concerned with Carter’s reappraisal of American foreign policy, the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and problems of EEC membership. In the Labour party itself, new forces of radicalism and reform are emerging, resulting in changes in Labour’s policies and the ultimate formation of the SDP. Labour’s unsuccessful economic policy and the widening rift with the labour movement lead to the Winter of Discontent and a near state of emergency. With Labour voters defecting, the scene is set for the Thatcher years.
Download or read book Free Labor written by Mark A. Lause and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monumental and revelatory, Free Labor explores labor activism throughout the country during a period of incredible diversity and fluidity: the American Civil War. Mark A. Lause describes how the working class radicalized during the war as a response to economic crisis, the political opportunity created by the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the ideology of free labor and abolition. His account moves from battlefield and picket line to the negotiating table, as he discusses how leaders and the rank-and-file alike adapted tactics and modes of operation to specific circumstances. His close attention to women and African Americans, meanwhile, dismantles notions of the working class as synonymous with whiteness and maleness. In addition, Lause offers a nuanced consideration of race's role in the politics of national labor organizations, in segregated industries in the border North and South, and in black resistance in the secessionist South, creatively reading self-emancipation as the largest general strike in U.S. history.
Download or read book The End of Parliamentary Socialism written by Colin Leys and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This trenchant account of the last twenty-five years of the British Labour Party argues that Tony Blair’s modernizing tendency was profoundly mistaken in asserting that the only alternative to traditional social democracy and narrow parliamentarianism was an acceptance of neo-liberalism. In blaming the Labour left, rather than the social-democratic right for the party’s years in the electoral wilderness, the modernizers rejected the creativity and energy which the party’s New Left had mobilized, and without which their own professed aim of democratic renewal was unlikely to be realized.
Download or read book Yes to Europe written by Robert Saunders and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first modern history of the 1975 European referendum, ranging across 1970s Britain to assess why voters said 'Yes to Europe'.
Download or read book Tony Benn New Edition written by David Powell and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2003-08-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Powell's fascinating biography traces Tony Benn's extraordinary fifty-year political career from the day he first entered the House of Commons in 1950. Benn has always been a controversial figure. Nonetheless many of the policies he championed, including some for which he was widely belittled, have since entered the statute books. Indeed, if history is a chronicle of ironies, there can have been little more ironic than when, following Benn's valedictory speech in the Commons in 2001, a Tory backbencher commended him to fellow MPs as Britain's ‘greatest living Parliamentarian.'>
