In 2010 Tony Benn spoke to UNISON InFocus, extolling the value of public services and explaining why he felt UNISON’s Million Voices campaign is so important.
"I think confidence is an essential ingredient of success. If you don’t have a clear sense of what you want to achieve you don’t make the right efforts to achieve it. That’s why I think UNISON’s million voices campaign is such a good idea, because it gives people a sense of their own strength and importance," says veteran statesman Tony Benn, who has signed up to the campaign.
Now in his 80s, the firebrand former Labour MP has lost none of his passion for social justice or his clarity about how that can be brought about. He sees public services as an essential component for a fair and equal society.
"A society should be founded on the twin ideas of, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need," he states, quoting Marx. "Public services meet public need, funded by taxation which is paid according to your capacity to pay. Without that you can’t have a fair society."
Mr Benn was elected to parliament in 1950, the youngest MP at the time and a contemporary of Nye Bevan. The NHS had come into being just two years before. Of all the public services, Mr Benn says, the NHS is closest to his heart.
"It’s almost prehistoric now, but I remember when the NHS came in," he remarks wryly. "I still carry around with me the leaflet issued by the Ministry of Health, which told us we had no cause to worry about ill-health any more, because it would all be paid for."
Mr Benn was the longest-serving MP in the history of the Labour Party, and was a minister in the Wilson and Callaghan governments of 1964-79. He lived through the "wilderness years" of the Thatcher government, and witnessed the rise of New Labour, before finally retiring in 2001 in order, he quipped, to "spend more time on politics."
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"I used to be considered the most dangerous man in Britain. Now I seem to be becoming a national treasure," he remarks ruefully. But his uncompromising radicalism is still never far from the surface.
"You saw the whole question of health care being argued out in the US recently, and the hostility and controversy that it has caused," he observes. "It gives an indication of what a struggle lies behind all these gains. Now we take the NHS for granted. But without it you can’t have a civilised society."
Mr Benn hails from an aristocratic political dynasty; he is the grandson of two Liberal MPs, and his father William Wedgwood Benn was a Liberal MP who defected to Labour. But when his father died, Tony Benn challenged the law so that he would be able to renounce his hereditary peerage and continue to sit in the House of Commons. This led to the peerage act.
The dynasty continues - his son Hilary was Environment Secretary, his daughter Melissa is a political journalist and novelist, while his granddaughter Emily became the Labour candidate for East Worthing and Shoreham at the age of only 17. She was not elected in this year’s general election, though her uncle Hilary remains as MP for Leeds Central.
Though never a New Labour man, Mr Benn endorses Brown’s decision to intervene to save the banks, seeing it as a shift to a more Socialist position, and the recognition that the government had a duty to intervene to save the economy.
Sitting in the basement room that has been his study for over 30 years, he is surrounded by the clutter of a political life.
Political tributes and framed family photographs cluster the walls, papers and books proliferate on every surface, the desk is stacked with pots full of rubber bands, pencils, pens and even the surprising presence of a packet of Nicorette.
"Brown’s decision to intervene to save the economy is something the Conservatives don’t like, but it’s given him credibility with the people," he comments. "If the banks had collapsed, the collapse would have become total. And if you make a lot of cuts now you risk losing the advances you made by saving the banks. You risk going into a double dip depression."
Now that we have a new government in power, cuts will inevitably follow - something that Mr Benn deeply regrets.
"When people talk about cuts to public services they forget that people depend on them," he says, exasperated. "They’re just told about the cost, and that it’s more money for the state - as if the state was some great monster that does things to you. When in reality it’s the public services workers who look after you, and who are paid for by the community."
To UNISON members and public service workers facing an uncertain future, his message is clear. "The people who perform these services are of a very high quality and perform an important function. They deserve respect and decency," he says.
He sees interesting parallels in today’s crisis-ridden times with the immediate post-war period. "Then there was a simple realisation that if you could do anything you needed to meet the needs of war, you could do the same to meet the needs of peace. In wartime you don’t have a general saying, ‘I can’t bomb Berlin this month because I’ve exceeded my budget'."
But this is not advice that he expects David Cameron to follow. He has met our new prime minister, as he airily recalls. "I’d heard that he had been inspired to get involved in politics by reading my book Arguments for Democracy. So when we met I mentioned this to him, and asked if he’d also read my book, Arguments for Socialism. He said he had not."
And with one eyebrow raised, Tony Benn reaches for his pipe and lights it with a statesmanlike air, and a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
