“I expect that the House has heard of the little document, which is circulating, about the boat race between the NHS and a Japanese crew. Both sides tried hard to do well, but the Japanese won by a mile. The NHS was very discouraged and set up a consultancy. The consultancy came to the conclusion that the Japanese had eight people rowing and one steering, whereas the NHS had eight people steering and one rowing. The NHS appointed people to look at the problem and decided to reorganise the structure of the team so that there were three steering managers, three assistant steering managers and a director of steering services, and an incentive was offered to the rower to row harder. When the NHS lost a second race, it laid off the rower for poor performance and sold the boat. It gave the money it got from selling the boat to provide higher than average pay awards for the director of steering services”.
Rt Hon. Tony Benn MP.
HC Deb. (22nd November 1995). vol.(267). col. (698-9). Available at: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmse9596.htm (accessed 20/9/2021)
I was reading this speech by Tony Benn, last night in 1991 on Maastricht which created the EU as we know it today. And think given the ongoing debate over the last five years it's worthy of discussion. What are your thoughts on it?
Some people genuinely believe that we shall never get social justice from the British Government, but we shall get it from Jacques Delors; They believe that a good king is better than a bad Parliament. I have never taken that view. Others believe that the change is inevitable, and that the common currency will protect us from inflation and will provide a wage policy. They believe that it will control speculation and that Britain cannot survive alone. None of those arguments persuade me because the argument has never been about sovereignty.
I do not know what a sovereign is, apart from the one that used to be in gold and the Pope who is sovereign in the Vatican. We are talking about democracy. No nation – not even the great United States which could, for all I know, be destroyed by a nuclear weapon from a third-world country – has the power to impose its will on other countries. We are discussing whether the British people are to be allowed to elect those who make the laws under which they are governed. The argument is nothing to do with whether we should get more maternity leave from Madame Papandreou [a European Commissioner] than from Madame Thatcher.
That is not the issue. I recognize that when the members of the three Front Benches agree, I am in a minority. My next job therefore is to explain to the people of Chesterfield what we have decided. I will say first, ‘My dear constituents, in future you will be governed by people whom you do not elect and cannot remove. I am sorry about it. They may give you better creches and shorter working hours but you cannot remove them.’ I know that it sounds negative but I have always thought it as positive to say that the important thing about democracy is that we can remove without bloodshed the people who govern us.
We can get rid of a Callaghan, a Wilson or even a Right Hon. Lady by internal processes. We can get rid of a Right Hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Major). But that cannot be done in the structure that is proposed. Even if one likes the policies of the people in Europe one cannot get rid of them. Secondly, we say to my favourite friends, the Chartists and suffragettes, ‘All your struggles to get control of the ballot box were a waste of time. We shall be run in future
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Son of William Wedgwood Benn, 1st Viscount of Stansgate and thus a descendant of the Wedgwoods. Long-time Socialist who renounced his peerage in 1963.
Benn at the 1973 Labour Party Conference: >The crisis that we inherit when we come to power will be the occasion for fundamental change and not the excuse for postponing it.
A long interview with William F. Buckley R. in 1980 entitled The Crisis in Labour. Benn correcting Buckley from 8:23 onward is enjoyable.
Arms sales to Iraq - an address to Parliament (1992)
On war in Iraq - an address to Parliament 6 years later
In a 2008 interview he said: >All progress has always come from underneath, by demands that are made that can’t be resisted.
Perhaps younger generations will find this odd, but Tony Benn and Enoch Powell (yes, he of the "Rivers of Blood" speech, but there's a lot more to that speech and to Powell than is commonly known) agreed that joining the Common Market (or EEC or later the EU) was wrong.
Tony Benn's Wikipedia is here.
>Free trade and global capitalism are accepted almost unanimously among important people in Britain. Multinational companies demand free trade because it gives them freedom. The City needs it to prosper as a financial centre. Speculators depend on it. Most newspaper proprietors and editors are committed to it. The BBC is so devout about free trade that it broadcasts share values and currency values every hour, entirely replacing the daily prayer service. Teachers explain free trade in business study courses, and some trade union leaders believe that free trade is bound to come about.
>All Front-Bench Members are utterly committed to global capitalism and free trade. Conservative Members, whether pro or anti the single currency, are utterly committed to capitalism. The Liberals, with their Gladstonian tradition and the Manchester school, are committed to capitalism. I say with the greatest respect that I have never heard a more powerful speech for world capitalism than that just made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who occupies an office that I once held.
>Third way philosophers line up to support capitalism and free trade. Modernisers and focus groups yearn for more of it, and business-friendly Ministers think of nothing else. Labour Members had an important letter from four Department of Trade and Industry Ministers on 24 November, and the contents of that letter were reproduced in the Minister's speech.
>The truth is that the benefits of capitalism and free trade are not really being seen in the world at all. We are told, for example, that the best way to narrow the gap between rich and poor is to have free trade and world capitalism. Ten years ago, the world had 147 dollar billionaires; five years ago, it had 274 dollar billionaires, and that number increased recently to 447, which is a rise of 25 per cent. Those billionaires have a combined wealth equivalent to the annual income of half of the world's population.
>We must consider also what the World Health Organisation says about the health of the world. One fifth of the world's children live in poverty; one third of the world's children are under-nourished, and half of the world's population lack access to essential drugs. Each year, 12 million children under five die, and 95 per cent. of them die from poverty-related illness; more than half a million mothers die in childbirth, and more than 1 million babies die of tetanus. What contribution h
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