There is a story near the start of Skip Kite’s TONY BENN: WILL AND TESTAMENT where he is on a troop ship in 1944 on his way to South Africa. He goes to see the colonel in charge of the troops to ask if he can arrange a meeting to discuss the aims of the war. “No politics in it, Benn!” barks the colonel. “Oh no, no not all!” replies Benn … what follows, of course, is a “wonderful” political discussion. At one point a young soldier stands up and points out that if we had mass unemployment in the 30s but not in wartime, if you can have full employment killing Germans, why can’t you have full employment in peacetime, building schools and hospitals? It is this sort of awkward question Tony Benn has been asking the political and business ‘elite’ ever since.
WILL AND TESTAMENT is a wonderfully moving portrait of the life and times of a remarkable man. A voice against the prevailing tide of political thinking, that makes you reconsider what you are being told by both sides of what is now only a political centre. Filmed and interviewed over the last two years of his life (Benn died earlier this year at the age of 88) and for the first time with access to his enormous archive, this film stands as a fitting epitaph to his life and work.
The film starts with a set of his life. Bric-a-brac is all around – a jar of oil from his time as energy minister, or an Airfix Concorde from his time as technology minister. Then there are the banners with the newspaper headlines declaring, “Benn the Dictator” et al, from the onslaught against him by the Murdoch/Thatcher press of the 80s. It is a brilliant way to start a film that we now know will serve as a farewell to the man; and then there he is, looking frail, walking amongst it all! A marvellous moment. The film then runs through his life, with Benn as our guide.
From childhood and the war with the loss of his brother, we learn how he formed much of his political thinking, witnessing for example the inequalities of life in colonial Africa, riven with apartheid. He says, “the only real questions are moral questions” and you understand what he means.
From war we move to parliament, where he explains how his understanding of politics is transformed. This seems to happen in two stages. Firstly, as the elected member of his constituency, he feels he is there to represent that electorate but is increasingly unable to do so, “don’t confuse parliament with Democracy. It is the people that are sovereign, not parliament” he says. Secondly, as a government minister, he comes to realise that he is being controlled by unelected people (namely, big business) and that Labour in the 70s, was not about change but about “maintaining the status quo” (namely, that of the privileged).
“We all have a time to live and a time to die”
Capitulating to the demands of big business and the IMF’s demand for cuts to increase productivity – i.e. the need for continued growth rather than “production for need and not just for profit”, the film neatly moves from the 70s into the 80s. Labours capitulation, Benn argues, leads to the winter of discontent, Thatcher, the start of world bank domination and ultimately the death of the Labour party (New Labour’s being “essentially a Thatcherite party”).
From here we move to his years in opposition and as a backbencher in Tony Blair’s government. His treatment by the Murdoch press in the 80s and his opposition to latter wars serving only to highlight the strength of his independent voice against the prevailing will of an all domineering parliament. Incidentally, he does not call himself a pacifist but instead came to understand that all modern war was predicated on benefiting big business, or to make ailing politicians look strong; not for any moral issues of freedom and justice. Benn was and has remained the voice of the people. “Many people go into parliament with left wing ideas and end up on the right”, he says, “I went the other way”.
Some issues clearly still anger him. He felt lied to about nuclear power and the squandering of the North Sea oil revenues in tax cuts and overseas development (“a betrayal”). Then there is the rejection of clause 4: “the abandonment of clause 4 meant the abandonment of socialism because it took away production for need and replaced it with profit. This is therefore no longer socialism” .
Skip Kite has done a wonderful job in creating a film that gives space to Benn’s views while enabling the story of his life to unfold. The closeness and love for his wife (herself a biographer of Kier Hardy) and his family shine through, as does the stoicism of the man, “We all have a time to live and a time to die”, which is moving in the context of the film. He comes across as fair but not without regret; strong enough to stand up for what he believes; prepared to accept the consequences if he is wrong, analyse why, and move forward – but most of all, he comes across as passionate.
Benn says, movingly and with pathos, “democracy ought to be a means by which we change the system to meet people’s needs and its’ been subtlety transformed in to changing people to meet the needs of the system. This is the great failure”. Does Benn feel it has all gone terribly wrong? Yes and no. You fight the fight, he says. Sometimes whether you lose or not is not the point, you must fight anyway, and this passion shines through in WILL AND TESTAMENT, which is a superb epitaph to a unique figure who will be a long time remembered. With his archive hopefully off to the British Library for historians and posterity alike, perhaps this film can go too, as a final word from the man himself.
How should he be remembered, I am not sure but he says, “there are two flames burning in the human heart, that of anger at injustice and that of hope. I hope I fan the flames of both”. I think that is how I shall remember him.
httpvh://youtu.be/IqOC0Kv2CCI