19 Tony Benn Quotes on Politics

Tony Benn quotes on politics

1. [I am against] the Treaty of Rome which entrenches laissez faire as its philosophy and chooses bureaucracy as its administrative method.

7. Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.

12. It will enable a Labour Government to do all they want under Labour's Programme for Britain...It will give us the powers to control all the oil companies, all the multinationals, to fix their prices and their distribution systems.

13. [Edward Heath], who sold out Britain's interests to the Common Market and gave our sovereignty away without our consent-with support of Mr Thorpe and the Liberals-is not entitled to wave the Union Jack to get himself out of the mess.

14. What we lack in Government is entrepreneurial ability.

15. Britain's continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation and the end of our democratically elected Parliament as the supreme law making body in the United Kingdom.

17. Through me the energy policy of the whole Common Market is being held up. Without opening old wounds, it pleases me no end.

18. When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.

19. Anyone from abroad will tell you that it is the class system that really lies at the root of our problems, economic and industrial. The House of Lords symbolises that.

21. People say that if we work for the Single European Act, women will get their rights, the water will be purer, and training will be better. That is rubbish. It is part of the attempt to consolidate the EEC.

23. If democracy is destroyed in Britain it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.

24. Had a long talk to the Chinese First Secretary at the embassy - a very charming man called Liao Dong - and said how much I admired Mao Tse tung or Zedong, the greatest man of the twentieth century. He said that I couldn't admire Mao more than he did. I asked him how Mao was viewed now. He said Mao was 70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong; the Cultural Revolution didn't work. He said he had been named after Mao - it was amusing.

25. Having served for nearly half a century in the House of Commons, I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so.

26. [The Labour Party]'s never been a socialist party, but it's always had socialists in it, just as there are some Christians in the Church, it's an exact parallel.

29. I was born about a quarter of a mile from where we are sitting now and I was here in London during the Blitz. And every night I went down into the shelter. 500 people killed, my brother was killed, my friends were killed. And when the Charter of the UN was read to me, I was a pilot coming home in a troop ship: 'We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.' That was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation and you tore it up. And it's a war crime that's been committed in Iraq, because there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons.

34. We have been in recess since July, and during that time there have been a fuel crisis, a Danish no vote, the collapse of the Euro and a war in the middle east, but what is our business tomorrow? The Insolvency Bill [Lords]. It ought be called the Bankruptcy Bill [Commons], because we play no role.

35. [O]ne of the twntieth century's most committed parlamentarians

38. All the emphasis on crime and drugs and pornography used to justify the supression of the Internet is really aimed at supressing knowledge of the radical political alternatives that are now available.

40. The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.