Tony Benn

Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn was born on April 3, 1925, in Marylebone, London, into a political family — his father William Wedgwood Benn was a Liberal then Labour cabinet minister later created Viscount Stansgate, and his mother Margaret Holmes was a feminist theologian. He attended Westminster School and New College, Oxford, where he became president of the Oxford Union in 1947, having interrupted his studies to serve as a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm during the Second World War.

Benn entered the House of Commons in 1950 as Labour MP for Bristol South East at twenty-five. When his father's death in 1960 forced him to inherit the peerage, he campaigned for three years to disclaim it; the Peerage Act 1963 allowed hereditary peers to renounce their titles, and he returned to the Commons. He served as Postmaster General (1964–1966), Minister of Technology (1966–1970), Secretary of State for Industry (1974–1975), and Secretary of State for Energy (1975–1979) under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, overseeing the development of North Sea oil and the Concorde program.

He moved leftward over the 1970s and led the Bennite tendency within Labour, narrowly losing the 1981 deputy leadership contest to Denis Healey. He held the Chesterfield seat from 1984 until standing down in 2001, joking that he was leaving Parliament to spend more time on politics. Out of office he became a fixture on platforms and panels, published nine volumes of diaries from 1940 to 2009, and served as president of the Stop the War Coalition from 2001.

He married American educator Caroline Middleton DeCamp in 1949; they had four children, including future Labour MP Hilary Benn. He died on March 14, 2014.

The name Tony is a familiar form of Anthony, from the Roman family name Antonius of uncertain pre-Roman origin, often associated with the Latin florere (to flourish). A masculine name with broad democratic warmth, it suits a politician who insisted on being known by an everyday short form.