Memorial to Tony Benn

I have been thinking of how to best memorialise Tony Benn.  When it came to the promotion of worker co-ops and his support for the Institute of Workers Control he was ahead of his time. Today every politician in Britain seems to be in favour of the John Lewis Model whilst doing precious little to genuinely promote worker ownership. One of the pamphlets Tony Benn contributed to for the Institute of Workers Control contained a speech of his on the Levellers in the English Revolution.

So my suggestion is we have a memorial plaque on Burford Church. This would not be the first time his name was engraved on the church. Tony first came to Levellers Day in 1976.

His diaries record, “At 9.45 we arrived at Burford Church where the Revd Gilbert Parsons was waiting, and as we approached we saw two elderly church wardens with paraffin and wire brushes wiping off a slogan on the wall, ‘Bollocks to Benn’, - a piece of graffiti that embarrassed the vicar but not me.”

Over the years he visited Burford many times.  In 1979 he unveiled a plaque to the three soldiers, Cornet Thomson, Corporal Perkins and Private Church, on the church wall to commemorate their execution and burial in the churchyard in 1649. Tony himself said, “Apart from their radicalism, which was unacceptable to Cromwell, they refused to fight in Ireland where Cromwell, effectively head of state following the execution of Charles I earlier that year, was engaged in a campaign that has scarred Anglo-Irish relations ever since.”

I propose a simple plaque to add a fresh Leveller to that wall.
“Tony Benn, 1925-2014. True Leveller”.

Plain and simple in true non-conformist style.  It could be unveiled by the man who sang on that day in 1976 and who joined him in a wonderful duo to tour the country doing ‘Writings on the Wall’, Roy Bailey.

Tony says in his dairy, “I came away understanding England much more, understanding the radicalism of the Peasant’s Revolt and the Levellers, and the very early birth of English radicalism, why our history isn’t taught, and how rich we were in our own tradition. It is our own home grown socialism.”