Tony Benn was a principled British politician who fought for the very identity of the Labour Party and served much of his life advocating for human rights and justice. When he passed away on March 13, at the age of 88, it was not only Britain that mourned his absence, but many people around the world as well. Benn was an unequalled friend of the Palestinian people. Long before the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment campaign inched slowly from the fringes of global solidarity with Palestinians to take centre stage, Benn had been advocating a boycott of Israel with unrestricted conviction, for years.
“Britain should offer its support for this strategy by stopping all arms sales to Israel, introducing trade sanctions and a ban on all investment there together with a boycott of Israeli goods here and make it a condition for the lifting of these measures that Israel complies with these demands at once,” Benn wrote in his blog on April 19, 2002, under the title ‘A STATE OF PALESTINE NOW’. The ‘strategy’ of which Ben spoke of was for Yasser Arafat to declare a state, and for “friendly nations” to recognise it. Yes, the title was all in caps. It was as if Benn had wanted to loudly accentuate his insistence that the Palestinian people deserved their rights, freedom and sovereignty. He was as bold and courageous as any man or woman of true values and principles should always be.
But one particular story stands out.
Outraged by BBC director general Mark Thompson’s decision to ban the broadcast of an appeal for the people in Gaza during Israel’s ‘Cast Lead’ operation, which left thousands dead and wounded, Benn sprang into action. Then 83, the former MP defied the ban and made the appeal himself to the complete shock of the presenter of the Today programme, Ed Stourton, who tried to interrupt him. “There are a million and a half people in Gaza without water, sanitation, shelter or electricity; 1330 have been killed, there are 5,450 casualties; 460 children..,” he protested. “What I’m going to do now is to do the appeal myself and say if you want to make a cheque payable to the Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza Crisis, post it to PO Box 999, London EC3A 3AA or go to any post office quoting pre-pay number 1210.”
Stourton tried to change the topic, but Benn was adamant. “I’m going to go on repeating it [the appeal] until you turn me out of the studio.”
Following the news of his death, British media was awash with reports about Benn and his long legacy of being a stubborn politician and uncompromising advocate for human rights. Frankly, there was less emphasis on the latter and much more on the former, despite the fact that Benn understood politics was a platform to quarrel with moral dilemmas. The parliament was a platform to serve the people, not to conspire with other politicians for the sake of one’s party. For some politicians, it is all about winning elections, not using office to carry out a morally-grounded mandate to serve the people. Benn was different, thus there was the love-hate relationship Britain had with him.
On its own, Benn’s legacy is remarkable as it is, but it could be appreciated even more with a simple contrast. Compare Benn’s legacy with that of Tony Blair. The first was principled to the core, boldly challenged US hegemony in the world and fought hard for Britain’s poor, working class and against unhindered globalisation that made states vulnerable to the inherent disparity of the global economic system. Blair stood for the exact opposite: A self-serving politician, devoid of any morality, and was rightly dubbed George W. Bush’s poodle for heeding to the US military adventurism, mainly in Afghanistan and Iraq. Benn, even from the point of view of those who disagreed with him, was always seen and shall always be remembered as a man of high values. Blair had been districted by his own peers even before he was forced to concede office.
Although Benn seemed guided by the same high moral values that accompanied him throughout the more-than-50 years in which he served as an MP in the British parliament, when he retired in 2001, he seemed ready to take on even bigger challenges. His task morphed from that of a fierce politician at home, fighting for the very definition of the Labour Party, to an internationalist, taking on the most difficult of subjects, and never bowing down. Following the US-British so-called “war on terror” — designed around economic and strategic interests — Benn rose to greater prominence, not as another TV celebrity “expert”, but as a fierce opponent to the US and his own government’s wholesale slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Since then, the man never stayed away from the streets. He spoke with passion and mesmerised audiences in his beautiful, immaculate English. Most important about the timing of Benn’s courageous stance was the fact that back then, all public discourses related to the wars were saturated with fear. But, whenever Benn spoke, he pushed the narrative up to higher degrees of audacity.
I listened to him once speak at Trafalgar Square in London. He wore a Kaffiyah, the traditional Palestinian headscarf. He spoke of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, as if their people were his own. Thousands of us applauded with so much enthusiasm. It was as if his words alone were the salvation that would free Arab nations from the bondage of military occupation and war. But at times, words live in a sphere of their own where they multiply and when repeated often enough, can change the world. True, Benn was not the only British politician who spoke with such candour about the shared responsibility of crimes committed against Palestinians, but few went as far as he did. He will be terribly missed — his assuring voice, his uncompromising morality and his splendidly beautiful British accent.
Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, UK. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
