Labour Party | Leadership Battle | Silkin, Healey and Tony Benn Debate | 1981

At a fringe meeting at the TUC Conference in Blackpool this evening the three contenders for the Labour Party Deputy Leadership will speak from the same platform for the first time.
Tony Benn,. Denis Healey and John Silkin will each state their case TV EYE will be there to see and hear them and to gauge audience reaction.
First shown: 10/09/1981
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Quote: VT25277

[@politicalphilosophy-thegre3894]

7:31: Denis Healey starts speaking 7:46 Heckling starts

[@pmm2014-SSS]

I am constantly amazed by the dynamism of U.K. politics over the last 250 years. It makes me realize how young my own country's democracy is..

[@ds1868]

Politics goes much further back than 250 years. The first Parliament met in 1264. The first Speaker of the House of Commons elected 1377. The English Civil War of 1645-49 was the most political war in history: who should be in charge, the King or Parliament? 250 years is nothing in the political history of the UK.

[@tonymcmahon_historybear]

Gosh - these politicians are giants compared to the mediocre social media click baiters we have now :(

[@rogersweet3608]

Oh yessss absolutely!!!! Pathetic these days!

[@rogersweet3608]

Healey and Kinnock Blair were/are traitors!

[@bunkerbill]

Excellent upload.

[@MrDavey2010]

Each candidate was powerful and authoritative. Much more than any of the current Labour candidates.

[@robdewey317]

They were losers rejected by the voters repeatedly until 1997

[@kailashpatel1706]

@@robdewey317 Benn and Healey were part of winning Labour governments..

[@politicalphilosophy-thegre3894]

@@robdewey317 As were successive Tory governments, who received only 43% of the vote at the highest.

[@MagicNash89]

@@kailashpatel1706 They were - when the Labour party was waaay different than what is presented in this video. And for that reason technically they are the losers.

[@stephenholmes1036]

​@robdewey317 not Denis Healey

[@drooky123]

no labour here, but i have to say all that was missing from Denis Healey's speech was the mic drop at the end. boom, impressive.

[@slowdivebreeze1]

Still one of the funniest moments ever

[@pmm2014-SSS]

Another interesting aspect is that people are smoking openly in the audience 😅😅😅... can't imagine that happening today...

[@politicalphilosophy-thegre3894]

People got tired of losing the equivalent of £20 billion a year in today's money in lost productivity, NHS costs, sickness pay etc for cancer patients and hospital treatment. About 25 times what it spends on public libraries. Society grows up eventually.

[@ludvighansson2586]

Wrong of you to criticise smoking as maladaptive to public healthcare. 43% of Americans are obese today. Whereas 41% was the peak of US smokers. The reality is that if there was concern for smoking as it relates to public services, then there would be concern given to the issue of obesity.​@@politicalphilosophy-thegre3894

[@stuartwilliams-fw4vo]

What a marvellous summer of entertainment that deputy leadership contest was! Kinnock’s betrayal did for Wedgwood Benn in the end.

[@marcokite]

that's the Lord Viscount Stansgate to you!

[@NPA1001]

Tony Benn allowed to speak... Healy shouted down by the thugs... things don’t change.

[@billjohnson2081]

To Healey's credit he appears unfazed. Some of the old socialist toughness that has disappeared under the influence of liberal creep within the left.

[@TwilightParasites]

@@billjohnson2081 Guys who have fought Nazis are not fazed by much.

[@tay2229]

1:51 This is notable, because Benn's deputy leadership challenge has, in hindsight, been widely seen as a defacto challenge to Foot's leadership.

[@jonathanemontgomery]

Dennis Healey was ferocious. Wow.

[@briandelaney9710]

He was a bully

[@ysgol3]

@@briandelaney9710 And far less clever than is somehow now generally thought - in particular he had no political imagination.

[@Nekrosmas]

You mean Dennis Healy, the Chancellor that brought the country from 27% inflation and economic destruction to 10% inflation and stable growth within a year? Give me a fucking break loony lefties. Dennis Healy is ten times the politician and intellectual to Tony Benn.

[@jonnobloggs8642]

The left hated Healy .He was not afraid to challenge their agenda and on many occasions deliberately antagonised his detractors with his speeches.

[@kushsakhu]

I see some of the comments speaking about the decline of the labour movement post this period. However, none of the comments address the role that corporations and lobbies play in deciding elections. Indeed, modern politicians talk about democracy which simply means the choice to vote. But the money behind the candidates is the real driving force of modern democracy and we have no say in that space. Big respect to Tony Benn A politician with integrity and attractive intellectual rigour.

[@ow4744]

I must say, watching this, it's clear why John Silkin did not get many votes. Squeezed between two excellent orators!

[@jhjhjhjhjhjhify]

I suppose this was the beginning of the slow decline of the Labour Party. Most of the more discerning thinkers were either dying off or retiring by this point. Quite frankly regardless of whether you think they're the lesser of two evils or not, the majority of Labour MPs... well, they leave a lot to be desired nowadays...

[@rogersweet3608]

All parties have lack of principle and quality today It's all greasy careerist pole Gone in a flash

[@christopherlane2552]

Denis Healey always loyal to the Government in which he served. Unlike Benn

[@briandelaney9710]

It was inevitable that Labour would have e to have a major rethink after 1979.

[@2whitsbury]

Was that Corbyn standing giving Benn an ovation at the back of the hall?

[@EgoShredder]

At 6:47 into the video? I'd say no but others may know better than I.

[@jackhadroom4540]

Corbyn wasn't a MP in 1981. He was probably at an IRA love-in anyway.

[@michaelcorkery3853]

I think it's Jack Dromey

[@conveyor2]

@@jackhadroom4540 Those are mainly delegates in the hall, not just MPs.

[@grayssportsalmanac85]

Nothing like Corbyn.

[@bhikkubodhi]

Interesting Benn praising OMOV despite the left fighting it’s introduction tooth and nail as ‘pseudo democracy’ and that the members weren’t sufficiently “politically educated”. The behaviour of supporters in the hall resonates now as well.

[@marcokite]

Socialists have never been keen on democracy

[@yorkiephil7744]

Benn - magnificent oratory but totally wrong as history proved.

[@callumclark4021]

Standing ovation by the far left for Tony Benn, cheering on their unelectibility like blubbering seals in the same way the Corbynista's did (and still do). Labour are a sad deluded party- always have, always will.

[@GeorgeI996]

Wow, compare these pioneers with the clowns we have now. ‘On the shoulders of giants’

[@NicholasKinich]

Real labour

[@Ray-xh6gb]

Dennis Healey bilderberg

[@___UN]

interesting

[@wilsonfisk6626]

Dream Ticket: Tony Benn, leader Dennis Skinner deputy leader... Neil Kinnock, janitor

[@ThomasDanielsen1000]

Yeah, dream ticket for the Tories!

[@wilsonfisk6626]

@@ThomasDanielsen1000 Tories would've dumped Thatcher after an '83 loss. They'd have saved themselves a big headache by getting rid of her.

[@npe1]

@@wilsonfisk6626 But they didn't lose in '83 and you're living in cloud cuckoo land if you think Benn/Skinner would have beaten Thatcher. Typical hard left romanticist, it's people like you that kept the Tories in power for 18 years and still keep them there today.

[@notsuretbh7215]

Key phrase a "dream" ticket

[@TwilightParasites]

@@notsuretbh7215 Labour had plenty of chances to take Benn as leader. He lost. Fact is he was terrible at great at getting left together terrible at appealing to the centre so he failed. Benn was way way worse at practical politics than Michael Foot, Healey or Kinnock. However his great virtue was honesty. You knew where he stood also true of Healey.

[@tubularbill]

Benn the Corbyn of his day....

[@stevebbuk]

They are not comparable in their eloquence, and I lost respect for Corbyn with regard to the European issue.

[@briandelaney9710]

Much greater than Corbyn !!!

[@ThomasDanielsen1000]

Benn was a charismatic left-wing nutter, Corbyn is just a left-wing nutter.

[@stevebbuk]

@@ThomasDanielsen1000 It's a different society you end up with, but he wasn't a nutter. I deeply regret his comment on the death of David James Wilkie, which for many will have confirmed the remark you made.

[@grahamnancledra7036]

Tony Benn was a giant of a man compared to what Corbyn is.

[@jayd4ever]

different kind

[@liamb8644]

13:25 unfortunately for them, they kept the Tories in until almost the end of the century.

[@briandelaney9710]

Well, part of the fault was with the SDP who divided the vote

[@andrewrobinson8305]

The SDP didn’t divide the vote. If they hadn’t existed, people would’ve voted Liberal as they were virtually the same thing. Many would’ve also voted Tory, giving Thatcher an even bigger landslide. Labour were on all the ballot papers, so why did no-one vote for them? Nobody held a gun to the voters’ heads, ordering them not to vote Labour.

[@yetidodger6650]

compere these to the absolute shower we have now, Sir Keef Starmer the dictator .

[@jackhadroom4540]

I stopped listening when Healey said 'comrades'.

[@stephenelkington4971]

The you're a small minded fool - Dennis Healey had an awesome intellect and would have been a truly great Prime Minister.

[@ac1dP1nk]

​@@stephenelkington4971 there is no evidence of that he was/is very gaitskellesque a gravitas of unexcitability and a worldly confidence. they might make for an interesting friend or university tutor but politicians are defined by their policy proposals and their conduct in office and his positions are mired in handwringing about the lefts unelectability and the consensus of the post-war triangulation that collapsed when the tories stopped playing. What im saying is he would fail to meet expectations regarding his intellect as surprisingly an all powerful technocrat is unable to reverse longstanding social ills in at most a decade. Obama is the arch example of this who i would argue is a match for Healeys intellect along with his superhuman charisma. He foundered with the same policy proposals and attitude of engaging in a convivial debate with fair minded worthy opponents than the reality of duplicitous bastards.

[@briandelaney9710]

That was the language within the party

[@ysgol3]

Healey was a blustering bully, dressed himself up as an intellectual but he was just another mediocre unimaginative right winger.

[@dawngutteridge9964]

You try and give anyone else the job of chancellor in 76, they’d cripple, respect this Titan of the labour movement

[@briandelaney9710]

He was a very able Cabinet minister but yes , he was a bully and yes, the Right had run out of ideas

[@ysgol3]

@@dawngutteridge9964 Of course they wouldn't have, Crosland would have been far better than Healey for example.

[@stephenholmes1036]

Benn a hypocrite

[@richardlaversuch9460]

Speaking approximately, the House of Lords membership is chosen by God.

[@melstocks537]

9

[@nickharris9761]

If PR was implemented replacing FPTP, Labour would spilt.