Lauren Booth
A vicious backlash has taken place against Labour’s shadow Foreign affairs Minister Hilary Benn, after his poetic argument for Britain to go to war in Syria assisted the British Government’s winning of the vote in favour of intervening militarily, held in Parliament last month. Some anti-war campaigners and disappointed Labour members are accusing the MP for Leeds Central of betraying the legacy and memory of his majestically anti-war father, the veteran politician Tony Benn.
Tony was a friend of my family for decades and a personal hero of mine too. When I was younger, I had the pleasure of watching him at the podium or on stage with a cup of tea by his side and his pipe lit sipping and puffing away. As time passed and the smoking laws changed, he would take the audience on a historic journey to the roots of capitalism or the evils of the arms trade with the pipe unlit - yet gripped in his hand. The kind of mild, determined protest he always preferred. We, his fans, young and old would listen, tears in our eyes, thinking “Yes - the world can be a better place. Let’s only fight for peace!” “All war represents a failure of diplomacy”, Tony Benn would say, and “A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world”.
Recently, my fellow ‘Bennites’ are denying our own pacifist leanings in order to verbally attack Tony’s politically independent son. One Tweet sent out after the Commons vote on military action in Syria read: “If @hilarybenn wonders what the strange whirring noise is, it is his father turning in his grave. Well done, murderer.” Another simply said: “Blood on your hands- sleep well murderer.”Does the shadow foreign secretary’s assertion that the extremism of Daesh is the same as the Fascism that the Labour Party has fought throughout its history, make him a ‘traitor’ to his father’s memory though? “It is why this entire house stood up against Hitler and Mussolini”, Hilary Benn told British MP’s. “We must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria and that is why I ask my colleagues to vote in favour of this (vote for military intervention) motion tonight.”
I have always felt it a parental duty not only to teach children their ABC’s, but to make them politically aware of the world around them. This is a more difficult choice for Muslim parents. Talking to our offspring about say, Palestine or Prevent (UK Government anti-terror strategy) is increasingly a rarity in Muslim households. The risks can be too great. If a non-Muslim teenager expresses a valid and coherent political opinion to a student or a teacher, they may find themselves elected to the School Council. Muslims teenagers doing the same risk an interview with the anti-terror squad and a hidden stain on their educational record. This was once the stuff of Middle Eastern dictatorships. It is now similarly present in the UK treatment of Muslims and free speech.
A friend once left her two year old son with me saying as she headed to her gym class.
“And don’t frighten him about the Middle East, he’s just a baby.” She was joking, yet we have entered a time when it we use multiple excuses to discourage our youth from thinking about anything more taxing than what pizza to have or which mall has the best milkshakes. Our lives, we say, are so busy, what with the commute to and from work, shopping and trying to stay or get fit. The ‘dinnertime chat’ where the whole family once gathered to discuss issues and, yes argue, community politics is increasingly a thing of the past.
Even if we take the time to share snippets of current affairs with our offspring, how do we know if talking to our children about our own passionately held values may not simply send them fleeing to the other end of the political spectrum? There is certainly a confusion in Europe right now about whether raising religious children will push them towards ‘extremist’ thought or guard them from the same.
Long before the Benn furore I asked Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London and Labour MP if talking politics at home was the ‘right’ thing to do with children? “They will only do the opposite of what you want, Lauren,” sighed the politician once known as ‘Red Ken’. I was stunned to learn that far from ranting at home after a long day arguing with the press and fellow politicians, Ken prefers to give his children the ‘information they need’ to make up their own minds. “Both of my parents were working class Tories. No one on either side of my family had ever voted Labour until I did so. The only paper in the house was the Daily Express.” So, clearly parents and papers don’t always have the influence they think they do, in which case I should be concerned that my daughters will become Zionist stockbrokers, whose hobbies are fox hunting, fast food, public nudity and Japanese whaling!
The satirist and writer, Rory Bremnar, famous for his cutting impersonations of political figures including Tony Blair, has daughters now approaching their teens. He once told me how his childhood shaped his political views. “My parents were actually very right wing. My childhood was sort of, Edinburgh, middle class, boarding school. When I came out in 1979 I’d had basically eight years in conservative ‘Madrassas’ which is what they (British boarding schools) were.” His views eventually moved ‘radically to the left’ of his parents where they’ve stayed ever since.
Meanwhile, in recent days, Hilary Benn has rounded on his critics in the general public who feel they ‘know’ his father’s feelings - even in the grave- simply because they admired his views.“You have no idea what my parents would have thought of me” says Benn. His father, was certainly a man of honesty and balance. A rare politician with the ability to love humanity even if it cost personal glory or gain. Tony Benn famously said of a right wing member of the opposing party: “I knew Enoch Powell...and he always meant what he said and said what he meant. He established a relationship of trust with the public. I didn’t agree with him and said that candidly to him, but for that reason I respected him”.
Hilary Benn made the ‘pragmatic’ argument for more war, against an evil ‘like fascism’ (Daesh), to win a possible peace- the ‘Hiroshima argument’.In the meantime, Syrians die in ever greater numbers. Bombs from a dozen regions fall upon their homes, villages and yes - occasionally - even a strategically useful target. I wish those who want to pursue peace, as the way to achieve peace, were as eloquent as Hilary Benn. And I suspect I won’t be able to stop myself telling my children that’s how I feel.
