Tony Benn was a left wing firebrand who never shirked his past – a peer who renounced his titles to enter the House of Commons and move left, left, left as the decades rolled on.
Was he a socialist bogie-man, the lefty who killed Labour’s chances of winning an election in the ’80’s by splitting the party, a man of the people who was really not of the people, the seer who saw the easy answers in a difficult world?
I met him when I was a young reporter on Tyneside. As Industry Secretary in 1979, he was visiting a shipyard to roll out the Labour banner about some long forgotten great decision or contract for the dying shipbuilding trade in the North East.
He was an imposing figure and I was nervous. Help, interviewing Tony Benn, with his goggle eyed ideology, his pipe, his sweep of words, his intellect.
Gulp.
I encountered a man who listened a lot. He wanted to know who I was, what I did the paper (bloody well cover shipbuilding stories that day if you really wanted to know), did I have a family?
Then the interview. He courteously escorted me to a quiet table in the union club. Then he plunked a tape cassette machine between us, dramatically hit ‘record,’ lifted his pipe and said: “Okay, the interview begins.”
The fact that Benn was recording every word I said, every word he said tended to concentrate the reportorial mind. There I was with shaky 70 word per minute shorthand and there he was his pipe and arms folded and a mini-recorder (remember those?) whirring on the table.
It made me, I have to say, tighten up my skills.Not just that day but from that time. I realised I could not be cavalier or casual or economic with the facts. It was important to be objective with what politicians say so a reading public could make their own mind up about important things. It made me a better reporter.
I said my goodbyes and really went through my notes. I got a byline and a page lead, important stuff for a young journalist and I am sure Benn went on to four or five other interviews that day alone about the Labour movement and shipbuilding and recorded them all.
On his death yesterday TV showed archive footage of the elderly Benn, an old man going through his basement archives with all his recordings. I like to think somewhere in those cardboard boxes there is a tape marked ‘1979- Tyneside interviews.’ And maybe I would be on that, shakily interviewing my first Cabinet minister.