Speeches by Tony Benn

"Political speeches delivered at public meetings are in the oldest tradition of democratic debate; and they have retained their importance in the labour movement. They are a part of the process of mutual education by which the people discuss and learn from their own experience. These speeches, together with some articles and memoranda written over the years, record at least as much about what I have learned as about what I have tried to expound. Some of the views expressed do not stand up so well to the test of time. Many are now widely accepted in the movement and outside. Political arguments tend to be most sterile when they are confined within the limits of conventional wisdom and rotate around the personalities involved in them. The most fruitful are those parallel, analytical debates, rooted in our daily experience, which offer alternative explanations of that experience and open up different perspectives for the future. Many of the speeches reproduced in this volume were intended to be part of that broader socialist debate."