Tony Benn: aristocratic fighter for those less privileged than himself

There were many ages of Tony Benn. The sweetest and most enjoyable was the final age – his old age.

I well remember visiting him at his cluttered home on Holland Park Avenue, surrounded by tape recordings of everything he’d ever said to anyone; by the memorabilia of socialism; of strikes and of hope.

I last saw him in the flat he’d moved into round the corner. Somehow, all that paraphernalia had travelled with him and squeezed into his down-sized quarters.

Tony Benn was a family man, loved his children and his grandchildren. His familial inheritance was both his undoing and his doing. His fight not to become Lord Stansgate was what I remember from my own youth. His struggle to return to parliament as an MP followed it.

But Tony Benn was a clutter of paradoxes too. Impossibly aristocratic, he would never erase it – and actually never really tried to. And yet his sympathy and passion was with those who could never live or even aspire to live in Holland Park Avenue.

In some senses, he continued to live the life of a lord, and in other senses he was on the streets with the masses. Red must have been his favourite colour.

No-one can take away from him that he fought for peace, justice and enhancement for those far less privileged than himself. He was a fine orator and had a superlatively controlled anger on their behalf.

Yet another paradox resided in his ministerial career – a long one. He was the minister of technology before the digital age. He was the father of the white heat of technology. The father of Concorde, a device exclusively for the very richest; a device that ran counter to saving the ecology of the planet.

I remember when MI6 was trying to recruit me as a young reporter. My would-be recruiter assured me that the agency was as accountable to “Mr Wedgwood-Benn”, on the left in the Labour cabinet, as it was to Mr Wilson, the then prime minister. This apparently to persuade me that the security services loved left and right with complete parity of esteem.

I can confess I both loved and at times was exasperated by Tony Benn, but I feel privileged indeed to have been a reporter on his watch and, ultimately, even a friend.

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