Guest post from Louise Mensch: "Tony Benn represented something truly valuable in the world"

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I was so sad to hear - via Mumsnet in fact - of the death of Tony Benn, a man I never actually met. I did once tell his son Hillary, a Labour MP, how much I admired his father - but that was a close as I got.

Tony Benn represented something truly valuable in the world. He acted on what he believed. For his love of socialism, he was prepared to walk away from a peerage, and even from the nobility of his family name. No longer Viscount Stansgate, he wouldn't even allow people to call him Anthony Wedgewood-Benn - he was to be "Tony Benn". And so he remained, until he died.

There was that rumpled, brilliant look about the man that is so endearing to our clever, messy nation. Like JRR Tolkien, whom he resembled, he loved to smoke a pipe; a particularly English vice. He drank tea, and was well-read. He seems never to have regretted walking away from "my Lord" and the bowing and scraping of the era.

Benn also possessed, as well as conviction, a great generosity of spirit. His respect and affection for Margaret Thatcher showed him to be a man who understood that political opposition does not have to, and should not, equal enmity (more Labour MPs wrote me kind notes after I resigned my seat than Conservative ones, by the way). Benn said of Thatcher "she was a signpost, not a weathervane". That was why he respected her; and it is why I respected him.

He had convictions; he lived those convictions. He was true to himself, bright, and kind. He was raised by a feminist mother, and it showed, in the best possible way. Labourlist drew my attention to his generous piece on Thatcher which told this story:

"I remember her at the funeral of MP Eric Heffer. I was asked to make a speech and as I was waiting, there was someone behind me coughing. It was Mrs Thatcher, and at the end I thanked her for coming and she burst into tears. She had come out of respect for someone whose opinions she disagreed with."

I believe that there are a great many MPs and commentators who did not share any of Benn's beliefs, but who realise today that in him, we have lost a national treasure; a genuine servant of the people, who did not need to be a nobleman, to be a noble man. May many of us involved in politics on all sides learn from his lessons of authenticity, humility, generosity, and kindness.

Justine...
Not as squeamish as those of us reading that post felt, I assure you!
Is this thread really what MNHQ want people to read when discussing the late Tony Benn?
That saddens me.
(And you won't get round me by promising a chat with animal --or gonzo- either!)

I don't think it's a tribute either, I'm afraid.

It seems rather spiteful to slip in 'the failure of his politics' at this point, surely?

Nice post Louise.
You certainly know how to win people over.

"The failure of his politics"
Niicceeee......

Oh dear Louise. I was nearly ready to defend you until that last comment.

You've had Caroline Lucas on here at least twice for webchats. She's just about the most well respected politician in the house of commons at present, & she's not Labour - you could have asked her to write something!

I think it's worth noting as well that LM might not have felt compelled to come on and defend herself if there had been any evidence that MNHQ was listening after Kate posted yesterday lunchtime. Any luck finding someone else to post, btw? Were the links from Twitter and FB removed?

Given you asked LM to post, Justine, it might have been courteous to have defended her here rather than leave her to do it from the beach in Puerto Rico on her phone. Early in the thread, we repeatedly made the point that our concern was about MN's choice of writer, not LM's writing in particular. Others did not enjoy the piece but that was incidental really.

LM was your guest poster, as you have made clear. I don't think you have looked after your guest particularly well. And your choice of guest does not reflect well on your attitude towards your audience.

It's not a tribute. It a succession of vacuous comments made by someone who didn't even know him.
He drank tea!? No way!
He smoked a pipe!? Fuck, really!?
You once spoke to his son about him!? Wow!
Your most recent posts show your utter contempt for anyone with a smidgen of integrity.

See this is the problem with the rent a gob culture we live in now. Anybody who can string a few words together gets asked 'to pay tribute to ' without anybody pausing to wonder will they say anything worth hearing and are they able to sufficiently pack their personal baggage away to do so. The reported remarks Boris Johnson made about Bob Crow show that he could do that. The piece below shows that Louise can't. Please Justine - don't ask her 'to pay tribute to' anybody else.

I think the point has been made several times that any of us, as "ordinary" Mumsnetters could have written the type of obituary Louise did so, Justine, you are right the flak should be aimed at Mumsnet. My opinion is that an obituary that is featured in this way should be something out of the ordinary.

I can see Louise's point that it might not be her place to think if somebody else could do it better but it is a rather sad indictment of our celebrity culture that either MN or Louise would think her well qualified to do so merely because she has a name some may recognise.

With respect to the ensuing arguments I would suggest that we are all so different and so diverse that comparing qualifications is totally meaningless; how do you weigh up the value of an Oxbridge degree against caring for a relative with cancer or a disability or compare the value of writing a book against doing charity work? The answer is that you can't other than in monetary terms so it's a pointless argument.

My first post, way up at the start of this thread, was to say what a shame if this obituary, which told us so little about Tony Benn, was to take the focus away from the man and his death and I stand by that.

Do you have point score pathetically at all times Louise? That last comment sums up perfectly how badly you have misjudged this whole thing.
IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU!!!

What is BTL please?

I would just like to point out that, as others have indicated, political weight has fuck all to do with qualifications. I think the comments from the author on this thread have aptly demonstrated the way in which MN made a mistake in their selection of blogger.

For what it is worth, I would be completely offended if this thread were deleted. I also think it would be morally wrong. I was asked to write this blog. I wrote it. It was a good piece of writing well-received outside of the BTL commenters here. Yes NN asked me on afterwards and I couldn't go because I was picking my son up from school. I was thanked for writing a great piece by someone at MN.

To delete a good tribute to Tony Benn (or indeed to anybody at all) because some commenters object to the author would be dreadful. It would validate what the BTLers said (that I was vacuous etc). It would show the site able to be bullied, which is not, I hope, what Mumsnet is about. I wrote the piece by invitation and was thanked for writing a good piece. And if that isn't the end of it, something's very wrong.

Freedom of speech is Sangria's ability to call me vacuous, but to delete a good piece because commenters didn't like it would just be censorship. There is nothing controversial in what I wrote, and again, it's been well-received elsewhere. If you hated the blog, might have been better off adding your own eulogy to add in, rather than spending your time attacking the author.

I love the way that Tories don't consider making 350,000 British people dependent on Foodbanks to be a 'failure of their politics'

ha fucking ha. '3 day week/gravediggers on strike etc etc'

You really don't get it do you?
And clearly I am pigshit ignorant by your standards but what is BTL?

Sigh......

MNHQ have occasionally taken down threads (and, IIRC, once a blog) because they were crass and offensive.

I think it's probably right this stay, because in those cases, the OPs wanted the thread down too, because they felt ashamed or upset.

But louise, 'good' is subjective. People are entitled to disagree. I'm afraid people are also entitled to think it's not the most intelligent bit of writing. Someone who was sincere would understand that, and they'd think 'oh, that's a bit crap ... but I'm busy being sad because someone I genuinely thought was great has died'.

Do you really not see that you come across as if you only care about proving you have better qualifications than some of the rest of us, and that this isn't how most people respond if they're genuinely being sad about someone's death?

This is just getting embarrassing now...

well here's my two penn'orth :)
chocolateisnottheonlyfruit.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/i-want-to-leave-plenty-of-time-for.html

Buy to let???

Oh, bollocks. You, or someone like you, called me vacuous. That deserved a quantified response, because it's untrue. As did the rest of the several pages of sexist and false personal attacks.

Next, you attack me for responding. It won't wash.

Below the line?

It's a two stage process of wrongness:

Firstly, MN should not have asked Louise Mensch because there was no basis for asking her other than that she's a 'name', she's a blogger and is not politically aligned. As she herself has said, her qualifications to write about him are no better than mine are and arguably no one is really interested in my opinions.

Secondly, if Ms Mensch had any integrity or real professionalism, she should have turned the gig down.

I run my own business. Sometimes I get asked to do stuff outwith my knowledge and skills base. I wouldn't dream of trying to fudge the issue because we all know that doing that is professionally really damaging. What I would try and do is find someone else for the prospective client who is more qualified to provide whatever it is they're looking for. In my experience, that makes them much more likely to contact me again in the future.

Both parties here have damaged their credibility by demonstrating a woeful lack of judgement.