A radical undimmed

Tony Benn, veteran politician and socialist campaigner, went from “the Most Dangerous Man in Britain” to national treasure.

But Benn’s radicalism remained undimmed, as Will and Testament, a new film

chronicling his life and the times shows. It splices the intensely personal with the deeply political to tell the story of an extraordinary life, with enough twists, turns and passion to fuel a Hollywood blockbuster.

Benn’s story is under-pinned by a life-long love affair with the woman he proposed to after nine days: his wife Caroline. Holding back the tears, Benn says she “taught me how to live and how to die”. Before her death in 2000 she told him to leave parliament “to spend more time on politics”.

And he did. The pipe-smoking tea drinker was immersed in politics beyond Westminster right up to his death in March, as president of the Stop the War Coalition, People’s Assembly stalwart and public speaker packing out halls. The film shows him relaxed, anecdotal, humorous and deeply political.

His humanity and integrity struck a chord with a public increasingly fed up with aspects of mainstream politics: from going to war on the basis of a dodgy dossier, to main parties fighting over a shrinking centre ground.

Fuel of progress

Benn wants citizens to get involved and is passionate about people using the vote others fought so hard to get. “Hope is the fuel of progress”, is one of the many rallying calls studded throughout this inspiring film. He has no truck with cynicism and apathy. “He encouraged others” would become his epitaph.

Weaving archive footage with home movies, the film gives insights into how a privileged public school boy, “brought up in the non-conformist radical tradition” came to champion the workers, the poor and the oppressed against entrenched privilege. His mother told him “all the important questions in life are moral”. He never forgot.

Benn gets to tell his story alongside footage of momentous events that shaped his politics – from the rise of anti-Semitism in pre-war Germany to the horrors of Hiroshima.   A personal turning point came when he was learning to be a wartime pilot in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) appalled to find Africans had no votes or rights.

While there, he learned his elder brother had been killed in action. Tony, now the eldest son, would later battle to renounce his hereditary peerage to carry on representing constituents in Bristol.

There’s some nifty editing.  A victorious Margaret Thatcher quotes St Francis of Assisi on the steps of Number 10. But as the eighties pan out, there’s a lot more discord than harmony.

Benn was elected MP for Chesterfield on the day the miners’ strike started in 1984 – and identified deeply with their struggle. “You can close a pit, but you can’t close miners,” he says. The same goes for Benn.

He identified with workers in struggle and was always keen to march alongside where people were fighting for justice – or celebrating solidarity in the teeth of defeat.

He was a regular at the Durham Miners Rally – still thriving though there are no pits left in the North East. For Benn, having his face on a miners’ banner was the deepest of honours – much better than a seat in the House of Lords he fought so hard to renounce.

Radical

The film shows his views became more radical after he became a government minister. He changed his views on nuclear power after learning the US was harvesting UK plutonium to make bombs.

Winningly, he admits he has made “a million mistakes in my life”. But he’s not ashamed because, “that’s what helps you learn”. As well as packing paying punters into theatres in his later years, he could also do righteous anger when needed.

The film shows him in passionate full flow, flouting a BBC diktat against giving out the disasters emergency committee hotline number live on TV after the Israelis bombed Gaza five years ago. He admits on film he was “chuffed” to get a death threat after a lull of many years, as “it shows I’m not harmless’’. National treasure maybe. Politically neutered? No chance.

Tony Benn was always stressing “issues” were far more important than personalities.  And he may well have a point. But there’s a pleasing irony that his own life story undermines this bold assertion.

Will and Testament is a gripping and engaging true story of a complex and driven personality – and a bracing call to active citizenship from beyond the grave.

A brave government would whack it on the National Curriculum, as a citizenship module to counter the creep of voter apathy and political disengagement. Or, better still, get out there and get involved.  After all, it’s what Tony would have wanted.
See the film!
Unite Live reader offer – get 10% off tickets

Before going on general release, the film is set to tour town halls. If you’d like to see the film in September – with a 10 per cent discount – at a town hall near you – simply click here.