WATCH: Tony Benn Speaks to Parliament
Tony Benn would be 93 years old today, and in tribute to greatest Prime Minister Britain never had, we publish this video, showing at once how right he was in his predictions, and how little the political scene has really changed.
He cites America fabricating a pretext for war in the Middle-East, the dangers of acting outside the UNSC, the hypocrisy of supporting Saudi Arabia whilst condemning alleged human rights abuses in other countries and the vile hate propaganda creating a fever for war in the press.
He talks about America’s history of brutality and the consequent lack of moral authority, the profit of the military industrial complex and their real motivation being oil and energy supplies.
He was speaking in 1990.
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The Tony Benn clip inspired me to take another look at Robin Cook’s resignation in protest at the Iraq war. Even though he wished the snake Blair no harm, that was one of the only things he said that didn’t make any sense. Jeremy Corbyn is seen listening intently and showing his solidarity with Cook at the end of the speech. His clear rejection of a catastrophic war shows his common sense approach when he was often labelled a maverick lefty that lived in a dream world. Another wonderful speech I recall was Gerald Kaufman’s. When he passed away the Times Of Israel described Kaufman’s passing as ‘ Britain’s oldest MP, Jewish and vociferously anti Israel dies aged 86’.
edited by Admin to correct wording
Sadly, very few of our representatives have the ability to say it as it is, certainly in such an eloquent way as Tony Benn did. I can only think of Robin Cook and George Galloway off the top of my head and the latter having also humiliated the Americans in their own backyard. Isn’t it funny how when you look back on some of these speeches, some are more transparent than others…. Or is it just because we now know the outcome of their truth or propaganda?
Benn’s son would do well to adhere more to his father’s philosophy, then again, maybe he still bears a grudge regarding his Christian name.
Why would you even bother to read Hansard? With your view it is all hopeless anyway. Most of us lived through the cold war, although I admit when I first moved to england as a young bloke and picked up a fishwrap I was surprised to see that people, especially journalists seemed to actually believe that cold war nonsense.
In the ‘south’ where people had the wider perspective granted by difference, I don’t think anyone subscribed to the belief that a few hundred million central and eastern euro humans were evil and all western euros were blameless saints.
The indoctrination in england is as all encompassing as US indoctrination – real cradle to the grave stuff, but it has allowed a somewhat broader spectrum of ‘acceptable’ views than the US. Sure that is changing but it won’t happen instantly, and it won’t be uniform. The fact that so many young jews are rabidly anti-zionist is an indication that the tide on that front is turning. Once every kid who did saturday hebrew class which was generally taught by israelis in their gap year between the IDF and further education, had his/her head filled with racist zionist nonsense. I dunno if that still happens, if it does increasing numbers of young jews reject netanyahoo’s lame propaganda.
Once the kids do that, one thing the zionists are correct about, is that they will reject the entire fascist notion of a state that is exclusive to one culture and the superstitious fables which underpin it, soon afterwards.
The anti russian thing will pass, less and less people lap up corporate media nonsense – that is one of the things that has motivated the conservatives and neolibs into these irrationally laughable claims. The usual steady as she goes, tories have it all under control blah, blah, tosh hasn’t been working and this sailing up to the edge of war extreme, is a last ditch attempt to garner support.
It won’t work – just look at how may, the bbc and the graun have been dropped in it over the revelation that as many of us predicted, the chemical cannot be tied to russia. Most normal people I know are saying “What?? They said it was proved it definitely came from Russia and that isn’t true, what other lies have they told us”.
That is when they should be shown this:
https://youtu.be/ELjjrmiNnyc
Most people use a diverse range of sources for news nowadays making the ‘established media’ incapable of selling the dummy.
If you wanna get all stressed and angsty about it fine, but, their nonsense isn’t working and may is screwed. Dead cat bounce or whatever the current tosh de jour calls it, will not last and the tory slide into nothingness will continue, so will the achingly slow changes in the PLP.
@Ure. Trouble is, “the Tory slide into nothingness” was preceded by a Labour slide into nothingness, and accompanied by the Liberals failure to clamber out of nothingness. This rottenness in the state of Britain transcends party, transcends nation; it is part of a global plague.
Vex hits the nail on the head again! Ure: while you were partying in the south, the old Cold War nearly incinerated life on earth. That’s what happens when you ratchet up tension. So now we party like it is 1983 and vote in the liars that are set on ramping up the strategy of tension: genius strategy Sun Tzu! That will fool the Russians. Russophobia has been a slow burn billionaire strategy since before 2009: you really think they are just going to pack up because of the inconsistencies of the Skripal psyop?
“It won’t work – just look at how may, the bbc and the graun have been dropped in it over the revelation that as many of us predicted, the chemical cannot be tied to russia. Most normal people I know are saying “What?? They said it was proved it definitely came from Russia and that isn’t true, what other lies have they told us”.
Well, your glorious leader was one of those liars that tied it to Russia:
“Based on the analysis conducted by Government scientists, there can be little doubt that the nerve agent used in this attack was military-grade Novichok of a type manufactured by Russia. Since that analysis was revealed by the Prime Minister two weeks ago, the Russian state has had every opportunity to offer a plausible explanation as to how a nerve agent stock of this type came to be used in this attack. It has offered nothing concrete in response except denials and diversion. Indeed, the only solid assertion that it has offered so far in its defence was that all stocks of nerve agents were destroyed many years ago—an assertion that has been contradicted by intelligence reports. That suggests that just over a decade ago Russia invested in the use of nerve agents and developed new stockpiles of Novichok to that end. There is clear evidence that the Russian state has a case to answer, and it has failed to do so. We can therefore draw no other conclusion than that Russia has a direct or indirect responsibility for this.”
Whoops: now Porton Down have backtracked to avoid OPCW conflict. So much for the truth?
PS: Maybe that is why you should read Hansard?
“Partying in the south?” Trouble with ad hominems to people you don’t know is that they are completely wrong as well as illogical distractions.
Before I moved to the UK, I was fighting the post ww2 empire, that was spreading across the world. You know bang bang – people getting hurt yet still trying to halt the greedy destruction of humans, societies, and the culture they had developed over centuries. Not even considering the distorted, all in your head cold war lies that you still appear entranced by.
The details of that are now irrelevant but it did teach me to be wary of armchair dingbats whose grip on reality is influenced by personal issues, often the classic faux lefty disability, a physically or emotionally absent father when growing up, which makes them reject any potential solution out of hand because it smacks of the ‘authority’ which they distrust/fear.
As you know, my point was that when you argue ‘fuck the plp Corbyn is no different they’re all sell outs’ – as you did, surely there is not too much point in slavishly following what these ‘sellouts’ do. They lie, so surely they are better simply ignored. Time would be much better spent organising in your local community rather than living online, sniping and trying to assuage self-esteem.
OK: let’s call a truce? The trouble with ad homs …I do organise locally; am part of a Transition Town initiative; and my criticisms of the internal workings of the Labour party stem from personal experience. Let’s just say that trying to explain that the White Helmets Xmas appeal (backed by Corbyn) in 2016 was for a terrorist organisation did not put me in good stead. I had rejoined to get Jeremy Corbyn into power: let’s just say my efforts were not required? You are right about authority – authoritarianism is totalitarianisms little brother – but wrong about my father …he’s still very much with me. So, all in all you are as wide of the mark as I was of you. I do apologise: catch you on another thread.
Benn was fearless in giving witness to much of what was not being said – if not of an unfolding globalist broad spectrum dominance. But did anyone in politics think that anything he said would make any difference to the outcome? The body language and reactions in the House also ‘speak’. That is, if someone speaks out against the directed narrative and they are not vulnerable to smear or extortion, then they will be ‘mapped out’ and rendered impotent – while operating as a footnote to a history and support an appearance of democratic government by political process.
The ‘way the world works’ or rather an accepted alignment of personal and social relation to believed and feared power in the world, is the underbelly to the presentations of a self-justifying social narrative overlay.
Where is power in the (human) world? Is it not generally synchronous with the carrot of inducement to self-gratifying vindications and the status or position and privilege such power provides, as well as the stick of penalty escaped or evaded for yourself and your family by compliance and conformity to decisions effectively imposed under a sense of ‘necessity’?
Rather than see our persons as free agents to judge and blame, (manipulate thereby?), we might see the framework of beliefs and definitions that ‘persona’ embody as the intent to control behaviour without underlying awareness of the narrative beliefs that frame thinking and determine the range or lack of choice.
The entanglements of ‘power’ amount to a powerlessness in which what we would NOT do, seems to have power to use us, and the only resort then is in the attempt to hide it in the tricks of diversion and confusion of truth in ‘stories’ made to protect a sense of powerlessness associated with guilt and fear.
Perhaps to end this sketch on a brighter note, living our freedom in witness to the true is an alignment within our self -and our life – that cannot be compared with a fake narrative substitution that runs at expense of true – and in demand of ongoing sacrifice of true. For that is ‘how the world works’, within the framework of its core beliefs and definitions that assign a loveless cause to a ‘world’ of effect. Adapting to and evolving of a false premise is like getting into a coffin while alive and suiciding incrementally over time.
Under the name of such ‘power’ is a lovelessness (hate) that few are willing to tolerate awareness of without recoil into protection and projection or displacement of pain and fear of loss away from self. The ‘debts’ of the world are not so much financial as relational honesty denied.
Power-in-the-world develops by denying development to others by engineering scarcity and control. In other words it is power over and at expense of, others. If the boot is not kept firmly on the face of those kept under, the expectation is of uprising and loss of control – if not of the boot transferring to the ‘other’s’ foot. Much of our (survival) behaviour runs on learned and conditioned habits that effectively make humanity into programmable robots for those who study the mind in order to gain more power over it. For they recognize that power resides in the beliefs and definitions from which behaviours automatically follow. Then all they have to do is ‘sell’ or induce you to accept, align and identify in their agenda as if it is your own. If you leave your mind open by hiding or denying its undercurrents, then your back door is open to deceit by habit-reaction of acquired identity.
Higher willing is not engaged in struggle to control behaviour. Any willingness for truth opens a space in which a higher or more integrated perspective can move – and move as the shared purpose of mind aligned in the heart rather than mental-emotional conflict between the urge to ‘get’ and the urge to limit and suppress ‘getting’.
Beautifully stated
Brilliant piece of video!
Yes he was right was he not? But even then, Libya got the same treatment and they tried in Syria too, had not Russia and Iran put the foot down.
You Brits had better sort out your Establishment soon, you are leaving us on the continent now, a foolish choice in my opinion, and we here on the mainland will sort out our governments. I believe Macron is in for a surprise, Mutti Merkel had a fright with AFD, and the rest of us up north will sort out our neocons too.
Sweden, where I live is going to elections in autumn, it will be interesting to see where that ends.
@King Kong. I think Sweden has as much Spring-cleaning to do as Britain has. Corrupt governments, corrupt establishments, corrupt MSM and a sheeple afraid to “speak truth to power”. You are right, a fresh wind is stirring, and some British scientists at least have summoned up enough courage to refuse to confirm our govt’s lie that the Skripal poison came from Russia. But how did Swedish MSM react to this news re UK govt’s latest false flag? Same as the Beeb, I bet. The parasite has a strong hold on the European body-politic.
Comment by Stonky on the Indie 4 hours ago:
BBC doing their usual honest and fearless job of “speaking truth to power”.
Having led with the Salisbury story for days on end, the news that “the source of the nerve agent cannot be identified” is relegated to 7th place on its website, just behind this important article: “Hotel forgives guest for seagull invasion – The Canadian man left a “tornado of seagull excrement, feathers and pepperoni chunks in his room”.
Good work BBC. Worth every penny of that licence fee.
“You Brits had better sort out your Establishment soon”
The ideas by which and upon which we establish our sense of self, life and world tend to ‘have us’ rather than the other way around – as in being under the spell of old choices, results and learnings that acquired a weight of unstoppable momentum while acting out from within them as if true. As if that is who, where and what we are.
It may be that the cost of following such ideas results in such a horrific, painful and meaningless existence, as to begin to question ‘reality’ – for the establishment is the current ‘handle’ on ‘reality’ as accepted.
So yes from where I stand I see social, political, financial, educational, legal, (etc) structures that operate a reversal of their original remit – as in the oft quoted ‘everything is backwards’. But whether that is obvious to those working as the Establishment will be clouded by self-protective need NOT to see at least their own part truly – or to do so only from a compartmentalized sense of self. Those quick to moral outrage usually have the most to hide.
I note that Benn does not appeal to morality as a means to guilt or shame others into action, and that speaks of an integrity of being. If the nature of a choice is made conscious, we can no longer say we did not make a choice, and so can recognize the nature of the choice by its results, and grow in the capacity to choose better – or rather a truly desired outcome. I feel that when we choose against our true interest, we meet a dissonance of guilt that can become an awakener or a drive to deeper denial in attempt to ‘survive’ or escape its consequence.
The human development can only go so far into denial and deceit before breaking down. But breaking down can become the basis for engineering ‘order’ that effectively denies life under the idol of control – and the secret rebalancing of the release of such controls in fantasy gratification.
As an FBI whistleblower revealed, it is generally those with ‘dirt’ on them who are promoted because that makes them ‘controllable’. Or make sure to set them up so as to be owned by whatever means works.
Only 28 years ago. Hard to believe.
I understand that the pope might not believe in hell? Well, if it doesn’t exist now, it will have to be built when George Bush Snr dies.
Mikalina – while I quite agree George Snr’s rightful place in hell is well established, it wouldn’t be right for him to cut into line ahead of Allen Dulles, a true psychopath’s psychopath of the first order, and earlier head of the CIA, who paved the Bush criminality to come.
PS – though the pope might not believe in hell, if he is familiar with Allen Dulles he most certainly believes in the devil. 😉
Kit, I think an article on international arms spending and trade would make interesting reading (picking up on the military industrial complex). This site has all the facts, if only people would look…https://www.sipri.org
A noble gentleman .Few ,if any ,in existence today in the UK parliament .
I forgot to mention Jeremy Corbyn is probably of the same caliber .
Brilliant! After lie upon lie, decade upon decade, to hear a politician speak so openly and truthfully and humanely about the typically unspoken hypocrisies of international relations just about brought tears to my eyes. Really. What a contrast Mr. Benn was to the array of mindless bought and well paid simpletons and idiots who inhabit the halls of Western political power today.
Thing was, Tony Benn renounced his peerage as Viscount Stansgate to make it possible for him to be an MP. That was a much more precarious existence than a lifetime in the Lords, so there was little to no chance that he would be a supine, bought little apparatchik.
I quite often disagreed with his logic on peacetime economies, but I aways respected his position on war and peace.
Until Britain realises it can be a neutral country of influence or an increasingly hated subservient vassal of a declining America, I fear the future of the Uk is for spivs, charlatans and hypocrites…..
Reblogged this on Worldtruth.
As an acolyte of Benn: I well remember him speaking, and commend him wholeheartedly to this day. As I had commended another, much better known apostle of Tony, Jeremy Corbyn as he advocated the same “temper of peace” POV. But I have grown disheartened to watch Jeremy “cross the floor” to side with the “temper of war” as Nehru also used to say. In the past few weeks I have seen him embrace a wholly fabricated Russophobia: calling for dialogue in one breath and sanctions in the next. This elite global superclass agenda has inveigled its way into the Labour agenda: so we can now see them pushing in unison …turning the clock of human evolution back to the dawn of the Cold War. It is as if a digital Iron Curtain has descended across Europe: and Labour helped dig the foundations with their wholly fictitious Magnitsky sanctions agenda.
And I totally disagree: the political scene has changed rabidly. If Tony rose to speak today he would be hunted like a wounded stag: by packs of blood slavering hounds unleashed from both sides of the house. The mildest demur to the bloodlust of the imperial capitalist raison d’etat is not to be tolerated. Long gone is the space for dialogue: much less the prevalence of sanity …and totally banished, or savaged, is the “temper of peace.”
So Tony: Requiem aeternam …we will not be seeing another advocate of the “temper of peace” within the bloodsport of Parliament: maybe ever again. Requiescat in pace…
Share your views wholeheartedly, Corbyn is not and perhaps never was, the man I thought him to be. Regarding “Wedgie”, we will never ss his like again, there can only ever be pale imitations.
Sad but true, Susan …sad but true. We find ourselves in the mother of all class wars between the global superclass few, their apparatchiks of state national power, their managers and enforcement personnel …against the globally disenfranchised many. Among the false consciousness content – and even the growing discontent among them …most don’t know they are in a fight, let alone who the class enemy is. Whatever our view on Corbyn: he is one man, and we do not have a vacancy for a president. The Labour party has chosen a side: perhaps they should revise their mantra too …For the (global superclass) few: not the many?
@BigB….”most don’t know they are in a fight, let alone who the class enemy is.”
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees it this way. So, so many seem to be totally oblivious to what is really happening and either look at you with a vacant expression, or dismiss any such notion as wild imaginings. Sometimes I just want to shake people and shout “wake up”, but it would do me no good, they either don’t understand or are too lazy to take the mental task on board. If only I could be as optimistic as Ure Kismet – I’m not.
‘Something’ will wake them up one day, Mohandeer and it will be your job to explain to them what happened…
True knowledge, wisdom, is given for a purpose. It’s a responsibility and to be used for the betterment of humankind.
There are many reasons to be disappointed with Corbyn at present. The media presents us with new reasons every day. Indeed the campaign of hatred and misrepresentation it mounts and has been mounting for years is without precedent in British history- given that no newspaper or TV channel makes the flimsiest pretence of allowing his detailed replies to the-generally ludicrous- charges laid against him.
This is not an unalloyed negative . though it smells like one.
People are learning that should Corbyn win an election all will still need to be done-nothing much will have changed and it will be the responsibility of those who support his policies, not to keep an eye open for backsliding on his part but to get into the streets and public forums to fight for them.
For my own part I distrust every report and analysis his enemies confide to us. I no more believe that Corbyn is selling out than I believe that he can bring socialism to the UK and peace to the world. He is however the elected figurehead of a vast sprawling complex movement of British people- one that inspires millions more around the world- which is slowly and laboriously rising up onto its hind legs and exercising its powers of self government after decades spent waiting patiently for Lefty.
If you want what I think that we all want, fight for it and leave the work of adding to the rationale behind the Hate Corbyn sessions to those organising them.
It might be helpful, while deprived of chances to rehearse the ‘Corbyn is a sell out’ themes to get a list of the PLP members and check off those who are not ruthless careerists, working for foreign if not British intelligence, working for his destruction and committed to wiping out democracy and the ideas of socialism. He is the captain of a ship over run by mutineers.
The problem is that the left-supposedly Corbyn’s base- allows the right, a tiny minority to dominate internal discussion and frame the agenda despite knowing that what the right wants is to split the party before the membership can select its candidates for Parliament. The place to fight the Blairites is not here but within the local parties, unions and affiliated organisations.
You’re correct Bevin, the problem is not with Mr Corbyn but with the simple-minded resductionist philosphy contunuouslypushed ot by the agents of mass control, that replacing ‘the head’ of a political structure causes a complete change within the culture of the organisation. As we have seen in the last week with the blatant fit up of Momentum exec Shawcroft, retaking control is a slow and fraught process, during which Mr Corbyn and his supporters must be much more circumspect in their ways of doing business than that which they are normally accustomed to.
In the end we rely on out gut instinct as much as allegedly ‘rational’ thinking when we decide which among the crowd of talking heads vying for our support are not sleazy sociopaths, but are relatively well adjusted humans who seek to realise an achievable set of goals based upon an underlying ethos of tolerance & a liking for humanity.
The first time the dire blair appeared on my TV screen, I felt my skin crawl – here was a man who despite protestations to the contrary, would do anything to grab the brass ring of power.
When Barack Obama’s appearance at the 2004 dem convention as keynote speaker elicited the same response, I really had to re examine my values and attitudes to be certain this wasn’t some type of subconscious kneejerk reaction to the man’s ethnicity. It wasn’t – it was just that like blair the man was full of himself and his belief that he was born to rule, no matter what alleged solutions he proposed, it was really just about Barack Obama or tony blair
I get no such feeling from Mr Corbyn. Yes, a completely unscientific and subjective judgement, but I’m sticking with it and also with the fact that we live in a world controlled by arseholes who will destroy people on the basis of their honesty.
Mr Corbyn’s true attitudes about the world we live in are best learned by studying his words and deeds pre becoming leader. There are many rivers to cross before he can be that open once more. The first one is a reformation of branch pre selections which altho made more difficult by Shawcroft’s ouster is still eminently doable as long has the careerists and celebrity pols who have swung behind Mr Corbyn are kept onside.
Once the deed has been done and the bourgeois shitheads squatting in decent labour constituencies have been flushed into the sewer reserved for scum, the careerists & wannabes in Labour’s hierarchy won’t matter any more as at no stage has Mr Corbyn lost the support of UK voters.
The circumspection is not about deceiving the public, it is about lulling the greedies.
I was happy that Labour didn’t win the last election, because if they had Corbyn woulda been screwed. The vast majority of current labour MP’s are neoliberal derps who would vote with tories on most important for UK’s future issues. Since fixing the mess – repealing injustice and preventing abuse would require legislation, Mr Corbyn would have been reduced to a figurehead having to cut deals with the worst in society to try and improve the lot of the best.
I admire both of your idealism: I’m not sure how grounded it is. Anyone who fights the Blairites in the PLP will be suspended or excluded. I can attest to this personally. Anyone who makes a stand against anti-semitism, like Tony Greenstein, will be suspended. Anyone who tries to use the party as a vanguard to Marxism, like Alan Wood back in the day, will be suspended (or I believe, like me, he chose to leave). Momentum was de-democratised by Lansman’s coup: I’m not sure how their recent proposals have got on …my guess is they will be killed by committee. The Labour party has made it adamantly clear that it does not want to be the party you think it is going to be. It is positioned where it has traditionally been: a slightly left of centre party in the service of imperial capitalist power.
As for Jeremy: his own words are enough to condemn him. They are available on Twitter, FB (though I believe he deleted his account this weekend), in Hansard, in the Guardian, etc. Please read them.
In my view: he has become a trained parrot for the intelligence community and Establishment. Read his responses to May’s statements on the Skripals …he parrots all the Establisment talking points. As a Privy Councillor: he is fed the corrupt intelligence to be regurgitated later …to which he dutifully complies: right down to the rote weasel phrase “of a type developed by Russia”. Well, it wasn’t, was it?
As I have tried to show: the Magnitsky sanctions agenda is a billionaire Trojan Horse policy that has been foisted on the Tories by Labour. Ditto the “From Russia with Blood” BuzzFeed ‘investigation’. Cui bono: the few or the many? Do either of you contest that Russia is turning London into a “killing fields”: because that is Labours manifesto? Can either of you explain how a conspicuously manufactered Cold War agenda is beneficial to the many? Do either of you contend that Perepilichnyy.was poisoned by exotic plant toxins laced in his sorrel soup …on direct orders of the Kremlin? Because to support such idiocy is to call for a Cold War which could feasibly be detrimental to all life on earth. To consciously resist is to resist the lies that Labour peddles for the billionaires. Gentleman, I respect your idealism, but do not share your optimism. I grew up in a Cold War, I do not want to spend my latter years in another one. Therefore, I intend to resist the lies and their promulgators in the Labour movement, even if it is to no avail.