Tony Benn. Photo: isujosh_CC by-SA 3.0

THE late Tony Benn, stalwart of two Islington-based national peace campaigns, stepped into the housing debate back in 2009 in a move that would delight many today.

An MP for almost half a century and a former Labour minister, Benn felt deeply about homelessness and particularly the plight of those struggling to pay hugely inflated mortgages.

He said that if council tenants have the “Right To Buy,” there should also be a “Right To Stay”.

Benn wanted support for homeowners threatened with losing their properties and savings when they could no longer afford their mortgage.

It’s all in Letters to my Grandchildren: Thoughts on the Future, still in print and prescient despite being written more than a decade ago.

Revisiting the book, I’m discovering extraordinary resonances with today.

He warned of acute climate change and the prospect of nuclear war.

Benn called on the young to “reject pessimism and cynicism” and be confident enough to want to change the world. Instantly recognisable with his distinctive voice, fondness for a mug of tea and a pipe, he was regarded as a left-wing ally and friend of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North.

Benn, who died in 2014, aged 88, wrote the grandchildren book five years before his death. It was famous for sheer impact and simplicity and read by people of all ages.

Always fearful of nuclear war, Benn was vice-president of the Holloway Road-based CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and president of nearby Durham Road, Finsbury Park-based Stop The War Coalition.

He had resigned his position as one of Labour’s front bench spokesmen on Defence back in 1958, stating that he could not, “under any circumstances, support a policy which contemplated the use of atomic weapons in war”.

Like many today he urged greater taxation of the rich – and less bailing out of banks – in an effort to support the poor.

“Just as in wartime people expect the government to support them against the threats they face, so in times of economic crisis they are entitled to expect the same,” he wrote.

He pointed out that Conservative war-time leader Sir Winston Churchill taxed the rich by 95 per cent just after the conflict in 1945. Interestingly, Benn suggested, it produced the background in which the NHS was developed.

Benn wrote: “An amazing achievement when you consider that even today America, the richest country in the world, allows 47 million of its people to exist without any access to health care.”

With the war in Ukraine and the current threat of nuclear weapons, there’s never been a better time to re-read Benn. He had 10 grandchildren, and wrote to them: “You live in a dangerous world – the future of the human race is in your hands.”

Speaking to Review, Kate Hudson, CND’s general secretary, said Benn had “a big heart and spared no effort to advance the cause of peace”.

She feared that today the risk of nuclear war is as great – or greater – than it has ever been, even during the Cuban missile crisis. She added: “At that time leaders were willing to talk, and they pulled back from the brink. If we continue with the current escalation of war, with no negotiation, nuclear war is a real possibility.”

Benn also warned about flooding and climate change long before it became the kind of reality that Pakistan has had to suffer. A third of that country has been under water just this year. In the UK we have had one of warmest autumns for years. Today there is talk of irreversible climate breakdown.

His book is occasionally critical of Labour. “One of the greatest weaknesses of the Labour Party,” he wrote, “even when it’s in office, is never to be seen campaigning for what it believes in, but campaigning for re-election.”

Benn admitted that his generation had failed children of the world. “In 31 years from 1914 to 1945, 105 million people were killed in two European wars, and many more injured.”

But the book also includes some of his favourite jokes. Like the one about the couple who decided to get married at 95. “They didn’t want to but parents insist.”

Old age appeared to have little effect on Benn. “To my surprise and delight I am rediscovering idealism as I enter my 85th year,” he wrote.

He added that all real progress throughout history has been made by those who managed to lift themselves above the hardship of the present and see beyond it to a better world.

That included trade unionists sent as convicts to Australia for swearing an oath to an “illegal” union; Suffragettes, imprisoned in their campaign to get women the vote; anti-apartheid campaigners in South Africa; and now environmentalists who are taking on the global establishment.

Vice chair of Stop The War Chris Nineham said: “All of Benn’s writing was fantastic. I thought the diaries were good. He was always a powerful and popular communicator of anti-war ideas. He galvanised the anti-war movement in Britain. It’s important that we have a Labour movement preparing to fight seriously against economic woes and has anti-war at its heart.”

• Letters to my Grandchildren: Thoughts on the Future. By Tony Benn, Amazon, £8.50
• Stop The War Coalition is holding The World at War trade union conference on Saturday, January 21, at Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, King’s Cross from 10.30am to 4pm.