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Tony Benn Quotes

1925–2014 England

Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party politician and diarist who served as a Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the Member of Parliament for Bristol South East and Chesterfield for 47 of the 51 years between 1950 and 2001.

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Also known as: Benn, Tony

Random Tony Benn quote

48 quotes

We want industry to be in the public sector, to change the power structure of our society...We have not yet carved out of public enterprise a wide enough area of management decision which ought properly to be brought within the ambit of the workers themselves.

INTERVIEWER: But the nationalized industries, do you think they were a success in the late '70s?

When it comes to it, we shall have to make sovereignty negotiable, either by ceding it to the United Nations or arranging a transfer in some other way... Do not use that as an excuse for war. We cannot kill for flags today.

More and more communists are coming to realize that socialism without democracy is no socialism at all. ... I believe that the next decade will see the growth in democratic socialism against the ideas of monetarism and corporation.

INTERVIEWER: Would you accept that the British economy by the mid- to late '70s was a mess?

JS: Right, do you find yourself identifying with Tony Benn, or is he of a different era and not something you find a resonance with?

I don't think people realise how the establishment became established. They simply stole land and property from the poor, surrounded themselves with weak minded sycophants for protection, gave themselves titles and have been wielding power ever since.

Disputed

The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.

Misattributed

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Tony Benn (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.