Born into an aristocratic family, he first made his name for his long and ultimately successful effort to renounce his title as Viscount Stansgate in order to pursue a political career in the elected House of Commons (peers are barred from sitting in the modern Commons).After wartime service as a Spitfire pilot in Africa (he never mentioned this publicly), he was elected to parliament in 1950, and remained there until 2001.Though a contender for the Labour party leadership on a number of occasions, and a highly effective minister in the Labour governments of the 60s and 70s, he never became party leader.A number of reasons account for this disappointment: his party was on its long drift rightwards from the 1960s, culminating in the leadership of “New Labour” by the Tory-lite Tony Blair (Benn writes that “New Labour” had nothing to do with the Labour party); the collapse of the postwar social-democratic consensus– not that Benn had the stomach for its inbuilt and oftentimes sordid compromises– led to the erosion of the party’s leftwing base that was his natural political home; and finally, there was the man’s personality.His deep socialist impulses notwithstanding, Benn was also hugely ambitious. Hanser, Carl (Verlag) But those close to him said his politics owed more to Methodism than to Marx. Even He developed a carapace for dealing with newspaper headlines which called him, almost daily, a “loony”, “cultist”, “Soviet agent”, “commie puppet”, “enemy appeaser” (for being on the side of striking union members), “traitor”, and so on, but the diaries make it clear that Benn was sometimes crushed by the sheer weight of the lies thrown at him by the media. He called himself a “Christian agnostic”, and had no time for institutionalized religion– when it came to “Jesus the prophet or Christ the king”, the latter was a non-starter for him. A bad parliament is always better than a good queen or king, because an absolute monarch can always do what they want on a mere whim.Socialism is international, hence South African apartheid had urgently to be overthrown, and freedom struggles everywhere (including those of Cuba and the Palestinian people) supported.Dictators– Pinochet, the Saudi tyrants, et al– should not receive support from the UK.Bureaucratic-command communism was bound to fail, because no major industrial power can be run like the Vatican. Tony Benn's diaries began in 1940, and have been compared to those of Pepys in their detail, scope, and accuracy. Ditto the UK’s dispute with Argentina over the Malvinas islands.Unless undertaken in self-defence, invasions of other countries– such as Iraq and Afghanistan (both of which Benn opposed vigorously) – violate international law and end-up being counterproductive for the invader. Benn opposed Britain’s Trident nuclear “deterrent” for just this reason– Britain “owned” Trident, but once launched Trident relied totally on the US’s satellite-based targetting system. He gathered himself and went on nonetheless.Especially important for someone interested in the British politics of that time are Benn’s accounts of the debates and battles on the key issues of the day that took place behind the scenes in the Labour party.Jeremy Corbyn, the current Labour leader and a lifelong ally of Benn’s, features in the diaries increasingly from the 1980s onwards.The diaries have an interesting entry in 1988 mentioning Corbyn (see photo below). This reader made a check-list of what he got right.The monarchy is essentially parasitic, and renders Brits subjects instead of citizens. These user guides are clearlybuilt to give step-by-step information about how you ought to go ahead in operating certain equipments. Like Tony Benn's other diaries this volume, which covered the last few years of his life during which he was retired, at least from being an MP but he never really retired from being an activist and campaigner for what he believed in. From Tony Benn’s diaries Free At Last! I received the Tony Benn Diaries as a gift last Christmas, and have been working my way through them a few pages at a time each day. EDITION PDF the benn diaries new single volume edition are a good way to achieve details about operating certainproducts. Benn wanted Blair to be put on trial at The Hague for his role in the illegal invasion of Iraq.The EU exists overwhelmingly to provide goodies for corporations and sinecures for eurocrats. Spector Books OHG (Verlag) 1991-2001 and More Time For Politics 2001-2007 (Hutchinson).