Review of The Most Dangerous Man in Britain?:The Political Writing by Tony Benn (Verso, 2025)
We are fortunate that the three pillars of Tony Benn’s socialism — the radical democratization of politics, the Alternative Economic Strategy, and antiwar internationalism — were explored in so many of his articles and interviews, and in his speeches to Parliament, demonstrations, conferences, and picket lines. Looking around at the world today and the challenges we face, Benn’s analysis is as relevant as ever and can help guide us through the tasks that lie ahead. So the publication of The Most Dangerous Man in Britain?, a new anthology of his political writing, couldn’t be more timely.
I would recommend this book as essential reading for every socialist activist inside and outside the Labour Party and everyone interested in building a fairer, better world of peace and justice.
Tony Benn and his writings have been — and remain — a huge inspiration for me. As someone lucky enough to have known and been generously encouraged by him, I was excited to hear about the publication of this anthology. I did wonder, however, whether there would be anything in it that I hadn’t previously come across. But given that it includes some great pieces I have never read (despite my keen consumption of Benn’s books), I was right to be excited.
To have this new anthology is to have Tony Benn with us again. It makes me reflect not only on how much the Left misses him today but on what a valuable asset he would have been if we had had him with us, with his great experience and insight, between 2015 and 2019.
What this new anthology does so well, in just under three hundred pages, is to distill the key strands of…
Auteur: Richard Burgon
