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I did not start out in state schools. Like so many children of Labour politicians in the 60s, my brothers and I began our education in the private se… - Melissa Benn
" "I did not start out in state schools. Like so many children of Labour politicians in the 60s, my brothers and I began our education in the private sector. My parents, Tony and Caroline Benn, decided to move us all to state schools around 1963 on the grounds that it was hypocritical to back comprehensives for everyone else and then educate your own children privately. In some people's eyes, this made us four children a collective sacrifice, a living social experiment. We felt only lucky.
Our nearest comprehensive was Holland Park, which cynics so enjoyed deriding as a showcase comprehensive and therefore a place of privilege. (If I had a pound for the number of times people have said to me, "Holland Park? Oh that wasn't a real comprehensive!" I could have paid for a year of private schooling, easy.) Holland Park was one of the first purpose-built comprehensives in the country but it was also, by the time I got there in the late 60s, a large rumbustious institution, which drew in a small, albeit highly publicised, section of the middle class who lived around the school. Some of these, like my mother, Caroline, became passionately committed to both the school itself - she was governor of Holland Park for 35 years - and the wider comprehensive cause.
My brother Hilary remembers the strangeness of arriving at Holland Park for the first time after attending Westminster preparatory school, where he and my eldest brother Stephen had been usefully designated as Benn I and Benn II. He can still remember how huge the school buildings looked to him and the strange sound of so many boys - and girls - laughing and running and talking in the vast playgrounds.
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About Melissa Benn
Melissa Ann Benn (born 1957) is a British journalist and writer. She has worked as a journalist for City Limits magazine, The Guardian, the London Review of Books and Marxism Today. Benn has written several novels and non-fiction books. She is the daughter of Caroline and Tony Benn.
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Melissa Ann Benn
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Additional quotes by Melissa Benn
There’s no doubt that a Corbyn win would pose an enormous challenge for the centre-right of the party, but the many MPs who oppose him can surely sit on their hands or plot, or both, for only so long. The task is even greater for the member for Islington North, borne in on a wave of popular feeling.
If his leadership were to succeed, it would need to be exceptionally generous, imaginative and inclusive. It would have to forge fresh alliances, take surprising positions and make unexpected compromises. Hardie the seer, the agitator, inspires those of us who believe Labour needs to present a bolder alternative to the Conservatives. Hardie the diffident party leader reminds us that we still have a lot to learn about how to shape “divine discontent” into a credible and popular programme.
There was something unsettling about the serried ranks of New Labour women elected on 1 May last year . All those structured smiles and cheerful jackets gathered round our leader made me feel like a bad-tempered Daily Mail reader or one of those glorious man-hating feminists of myth who live in Hackney and refuse to shave their legs. What I hadn’t realised was that this unmonstrous regiment of women came much closer to representing the end of something – feminism as a natural ally of radical politics – than to representing a key moment in the long march through the institutions. Nor had I imagined that so many of them would become part of that blancmange known as one-nation politics.
There are many reasons why they have proved such a disappointment. Personal ambition is one. Most new MPs live in fear of marginalisation, of being banished to the Siberia of consistently applied principle, of having to face up to the fact that they will never be a bag-carrier for an Under-Secretary of State. Sisterly solidarity, too, plays a part. Top Labour women are ferociously loyal to each other, but their loyalty has so far furthered no cause greater than the right of cabinet ministers to send their children to selective schools or to have their minds changed over tobacco sponsorship of Formula One.
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When it comes to the politics of agitation, Jeremy Corbyn is Hardie’s clear heir. Were Hardie alive in the 21st century he would surely have opposed the Iraq war, visited the Occupy encampments, supported those activists fighting against the "social cleansing" of London and denounced austerity. A charismatic public speaker who frequently addressed huge crowds, he would have recognised the enthusiasm and fervour of the mass audiences that Corbyn has attracted across the country, which so many thought dead in the age of Twitter and Facebook.
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