Goodbye, Tony Benn

I just caught up to the news that Tony Benn died. I don’t know much about Tony Benn, but what I knew of him caused me to respect him a great deal. The UK literally had to re-wire some laws because he was the first person in British history to refuse to go ‘up’ from the House of Commons to the House of Lords. His father had been a lord, and the lordship had gone to his brother, and then when his brother passed away, Tony was to be a ‘Lord’ – but he refused it because he was, by principle, against the lordships, and so he remained in the Commons. Tony Benn was also quite well balanced on Middle Eastern issues, perhaps due to his time in the Middle East when he served in the army. He was also one of the few politicians, if not the only one, who took the time to speak to Brian Haw, the lone activist who I’ve mentioned in various posts, and who spent around 9 years in a lone sit-in outside of British Parliament in protest against their foreign policy, especially towards Iraq. Thanks for all the good you’ve done or spoken, Tony, you will be remembered, and you will be missed, there are too few good men, and most of them aspire to the high places that you understood to be beneath you.