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… Read more »
@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… Read more »
“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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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:… Read more »
“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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »
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… Read more »