Tony Benn

Who was Tony Benn?

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn was a British Labour politician who was a Member of Parliament for 47 years between 1950 and 2001 and a Cabinet minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in the 1960s and 1970s.

Benn inherited a hereditary peerage on his father's death, preventing him continuing as an MP. He fought to remain in the House of Commons, and then campaigned for the ability to renounce the title, a campaign which succeeded with the Peerage Act 1963. In the Labour Government of 1964–70 he served first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as a "technocratic" Minister of Technology.

In 1971–72, when the Labour Party was in Opposition, he was Chairman of the Labour Party. In the Labour Government of 1974–1979, he returned to the Cabinet, initially as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy, retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister. When the Labour Party was in Opposition in the 1980s, he was a prominent figure on its left wing and the term "Bennite" came to be used for someone with radical left-wing politics.