My day with Tony Benn: baked beans, tea and sympathy

Tony Benn was a man who dined modestly – and never came to terms with his first-class status

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(Image credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

TONY BENN, the Labour politician who has died aged 88, was in his heyday a divisive and mistrusted figure. He was reviled on the Right, standing in the eyes of many Tory voters as the embodiment of State socialism not far removed from Communism: and he split his own Labour party when he challenged Denis Healey for the deputy leadership in 1981. He was held responsible by many for Labour’s dismal electoral failures during the Thatcher years. He lost that challenge for the soul of the party by a hair’s breadth.

In Private Eye he was ‘Bennatollah’, and the Sun, having consulted an American shrink, dubbed him ‘Bonkers Benn’. But his style and humour were widely enjoyed by the public. When, he was asked on a TV show just before we met, had the Labour Party ceased to be a socialist party? ‘Never was’, he replied, ‘though there are some socialists in the party just as there are some Christians in churches’.

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Robert Chesshyre writes regularly on police culture and is a former US correspondent of The Observer. His books include ‘The Force: Inside the Police’ and 'When the Iron Lady Ruled Britain''.