![\"th-2\"](\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/th-25.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nBob Goupillot (RCN) provides this tribute to Tony Benn, who died on 14th March.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At 7.30 this morning I heard that Tony Benn had died. I first heard him speak in Darlington in the late 1970\u2019s. I was in my early twenties.\u00a0That speech and subsequent ones plus two of his books; Arguments for Socialism<\/cite> and Arguments for Democracy<\/cite> made a large and lasting impact on my political and social beliefs.\u00a0I had considered myself a socialist ever since I could give my politics a name.\u00a0I can even remember taking part in some anti-Tory direct action in the street when I was still in short trousers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyway to my young ears Tony Benn offered a coherent vision of a better world, a vehicle to get there (The Labour Party) and a strategy and plan.\u00a0The strategy was to bring all aspects of society under popular democratic control and uproot the political economy of the ruling class e.g. abolish the House of Lords, nationalise the banks, insurance and pension companies and promote workers control of industry.\u00a0Very importantly we were to make the Labour Party democratic, transparent and its elected members accountable to and recallable by the membership. I had originally joined the Labour Party when I was 16 but not been active.\u00a0At 22 I went to study in Northern Ireland and my membership lapsed.<\/p>\n I re-joined around 1982 inspired by Mr Benn and the left wing of the Labour Party in Edinburgh.\u00a0At this point I was an enthusiastic Bennite. We campaigned locally to wrest Edinburgh council from the Tories and to get Benn elected as Deputy Leader against right winger, Dennis Healey.\u00a0We nearly did it too, being betrayed by \u2018kneel\u2019 Kinnock amongst others.\u00a0Kinnock went on to describe those 12 Labour Councillors who stuck by their manifesto commitment to produce a needs led budget as,<\/p>\n “Less than the dirt under the fingernails of the body of the Labour movement”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Charming man.<\/p>\n That\u2019s was 1984 the year the miner\u2019s strike began. That was the most important political year of my life.\u00a0I was transformed from Bennite to a revolutionary, anarcho-communist, committed to class struggle by any and all means necessary.\u00a0Later the Poll Tax shaped my views to republican communism. However, the radical red threads that connects me still to the aristocratic Tony is our shared commitment to radical democracy, acting from principle, a warm egalitarian humanism and the living proof that you can become increasingly radical with age.<\/p>\n 14th March 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bob Goupillot (RCN) provides this tribute to Tony Benn, who died on 14th March. At 7.30 this morning I heard that Tony Benn had died. I first heard him speak in Darlington in the late 1970\u2019s. I was in my early twenties.\u00a0That speech and subsequent ones plus two of his books; Arguments for Socialism and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1864],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-6738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-history","tag-author-bob-goupillot"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mastodon.scot\/@rcfscotland\/109383777573083459","error":""},"views":6267,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6738"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22557,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6738\/revisions\/22557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}