Economics
Economies by region  Africa · North America South America · Asia Europe · Oceania
General categories
Microeconomics · Macroeconomics History of economic thought Methodology · Heterodox approaches
Technical methods
Mathematical · Econometrics Experimental · National accounting
Fields and subfields
Behavioral · Cultural · Evolutionary Growth · Development · History International · Economic systems Monetary and Financial economics Public and Welfare economics Health · Education · Welfare Population · Labour · Personnel Managerial · Computational Business · Information · Game theory Industrial organization · Law Agricultural · Natural resource Environmental · Ecological Urban · Rural · Regional · Geography
Lists
Journals · Publications Categories · Topics · Economists
The economy: concept and history
Business and Economics Portal
This box: view talk edit

Monetarism is a tendency in economic thought that emphasizes the role of governments in controlling the amount of money in circulation. It is the view within monetary economics that variation in the money supply has major influences on national output in the short run and the price level over longer periods and that objectives of monetary policy are best met by targeting the growth rate of the money supply.^[1]

Monetarism today is mainly associated with the work of Milton Friedman, who was among the generation of economists to accept Keynesian economics and then criticize it on its own terms. Friedman and Anna Schwartz wrote an influential book, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, and argued that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." Though opposed to the existence of the Federal Reserve, but given that it does exist, Friedman advocated a central bank policy aimed at keeping the supply and demand for money at equilibrium, as measured by growth in productivity and demand.

Description[link]

Monetarism is an economic theory which focuses on the macroeconomic effects of the supply of money and central banking. Formulated by Milton Friedman, it argues that excessive expansion of the money supply is inherently inflationary, and that monetary authorities should focus solely on maintaining price stability.

This theory draws its roots from two almost diametrically opposed ideas: the hard money policies that dominated monetary thinking in the late 19th century, and the monetary theories of John Maynard Keynes, who, working in the inter-war period during the failure of the restored gold standard, proposed a demand-driven model for money which was the foundation of macroeconomics. While Keynes had focused on the value stability of currency, with the resulting panics based on an insufficient money supply leading to alternate currency and collapse, then Friedman focused on price stability, which is the equilibrium between supply and demand for money.

The result was summarized in a historical analysis of monetary policy, Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960, which Friedman coauthored with Anna Schwartz. The book attributed inflation to excess money supply generated by a central bank. It attributed deflationary spirals to the reverse effect of a failure of a central bank to support the money supply during a liquidity crunch.

Friedman originally proposed a fixed monetary rule, called Friedman's k-percent rule, where the money supply would be calculated by known macroeconomic and financial factors, targeting a specific level or range of inflation. Under this rule, there would be no leeway for the central reserve bank as money supply increases could be determined "by a computer", and business could anticipate all monetary policy decisions.^[2][3]

Rise[link]

Clark Warburton is credited with making the first solid empirical case for the monetarist interpretation of business fluctuations in a series of papers from 1945.^[1]p. 493 Within mainstream economics, the rise of monetarism accelerated from Milton Friedman's 1956 restatement of the quantity theory of money. Friedman argued that the demand for money could be described as depending on a small number of economic variables. Thus, where the money supply expanded, people would not simply wish to hold the extra money in idle money balances; i.e., if they were in equilibrium before the increase, they were already holding money balances to suit their requirements, and thus after the increase they would have money balances surplus to their requirements. These excess money balances would therefore be spent and hence aggregate demand would rise. Similarly, if the money supply were reduced people would want to replenish their holdings of money by reducing their spending. In this, Friedman challenged a simplification attributed to Keynes suggesting that "money does not matter."^[4] Thus the word 'monetarist' was coined.

The rise of the popularity of monetarism also picked up in political circles when Keynesian economics seemed unable to explain or cure the seemingly contradictory problems of rising unemployment and inflation in response to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1972 and the oil shocks of 1973. On the one hand, higher unemployment seemed to call for Keynesian reflation, but on the other hand rising inflation seemed to call for Keynesian disinflation. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed a Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker who made inflation fighting his primary objective, and restricted the money supply (in accordance with the Friedman rule) to tame inflation in the economy. The result was the creation of the desired price stability.

Monetarists not only sought to explain present problems; they also interpreted historical ones. Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in their book A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 argued that the Great Depression of 1930 was caused by a massive contraction of the money supply and not by the lack of investment Keynes had argued. They also maintained that post-war inflation was caused by an over-expansion of the money supply. They made famous the assertion of monetarism that 'inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon'. Many Keynesian economists initially believed that the Keynesian vs. monetarist debate was solely about whether fiscal or monetary policy was the more effective tool of demand management. By the mid-1970s, however, the debate had moved on to other issues as monetarists began presenting a fundamental challenge to Keynesianism.

Many monetarists sought to resurrect the pre-Keynesian view that market economies are inherently stable in the absence of major unexpected fluctuations in the money supply. Because of this belief in the stability of free-market economies they asserted that active demand management (e.g. by the means of increasing government spending) is unnecessary and indeed likely to be harmful. The basis of this argument is an equilibrium between "stimulus" fiscal spending and future interest rates. In effect, Friedman's model argues that current fiscal spending creates as much of a drag on the economy by increased interest rates as it creates present consumption: that it has no real effect on total demand, merely that of shifting demand from the investment sector (I) to the consumer sector (C).

When Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, won the 1979 general election defeating the incumbent Labour Party led by James Callaghan, Britain had endured several years of severe inflation, which was rarely below 10% and by the time of the election in May 1979 stood at 10.3%.^[5] Thatcher implemented monetarism as the weapon in her battle against inflation, and succeeded at reducing it to 4.6% by 1983 - although this was achieved largely by the mass closure of inefficient factories, which resulted in a recession and in unemployment doubling from around 1,500,000 people to more than 3,000,000. This policy was controversial with the public and even some of her own Members of Parliament (MPs) (as well as former Conservative prime ministers Harold Macmillan^[6]and Edward Heath)^[7], but her success in the Falklands war led to a recovery in her popularity which, coupled with a division of the votes between opposition parties, in turn led to her Conservative party winning the 1983 general election with a substantially increased majority in spite of their share of the vote declining. This came at a time of a global recession, and Thatcher's monetarist policies earned her the respect of political leaders worldwide as Britain was a world leader in the fight against the recession and one of the first nations to re-establish economic growth.^[8]

Callaghan himself had adopted policies echoing monetarism while serving as prime minister from 1976 to 1979, adopting deflationary policies and reducing public spending in response to high inflation and national debt. He initially had some success, as inflation was below 10% by the summer of 1978, although unemployment now stood at 1,500,000. However, by the time of his election defeat barely a year later, inflation had soared to 27%.^[9]

Practice[link]

A realistic theory should be able to explain the deflationary waves of the late 19th century, the Great Depression, and the stagflation period beginning with the uncoupling of exchange rates in 1972. Monetarists argue that there was no inflationary investment boom in the 1920s. Instead, monetarist thinking centers on the contraction of the M1 during the 1931-1933 period, and argues from there that the Federal Reserve could have avoided the Great Depression by moves to provide sufficient liquidity. In essence, they argue that there was an insufficient supply of money.

From their conclusion that incorrect central bank policy is at the root of large swings in inflation and price instability, monetarists argued that the primary motivation for excessive easing of central bank policy is to finance fiscal deficits by the central government. Hence, restraint of government spending is the most important single target to restrain excessive monetary growth.

With the failure of demand-driven fiscal policies to restrain inflation and produce growth in the 1970s, the way was paved for a new policy of fighting inflation through the central bank, which would be the bank's cardinal responsibility. In typical economic theory, this would be accompanied by austerity shock treatment, as is generally recommended by the International Monetary Fund: such a course was taken in the United Kingdom, where government spending was slashed in the late '70s and early '80s under the political ascendance of Margaret Thatcher. In the United States, the opposite approach was taken and real government spending increased much faster during Reagan's first four years (4.22%/year) than it did under Carter (2.55%/year).^[10]

In the ensuing short term, unemployment in both countries remained stubbornly high while central banks raised interest rates to restrain credit. These policies dramatically reduced inflation rates in both countries (the United States' inflation rate fell from almost 14% in 1980 to around 3% in 1983^{[citation needed]}), allowing liberalization of credit and the reduction of interest rates, which led ultimately to the inflationary economic booms of the 1980s. Arguments have been raised, however, that the fall of the inflation rate may be less from control of the money supply and more to do with the unemployment level's effect on demand; some also claim the use of credit to fuel economic expansion is itself an anti-monetarist tool, as it can be argued that an increase in money supply alone constitutes inflation.^{[citation needed]}

Monetarism re-asserted itself in central bank policy in western governments at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, with a contraction both in spending and in the money supply, ending the booms experienced in the US and UK.

With the crash of 1987, questioning of the prevailing monetarist policy began. Monetarists argued that the 1987 stock market decline was simply a correction between conflicting monetary policies in the United States and Europe. Critics of this viewpoint became louder as Japan slid into a sustained deflationary spiral and the collapse of the savings-and-loan banking system in the United States pointed to larger structural changes in the economy.

In the late 1980s, Paul Volcker was succeeded by Alan Greenspan, a leading monetarist. His handling of monetary policy in the run-up to the 1991 recession was criticized from the right as being excessively tight, and costing George H. W. Bush re-election. The incoming Democratic president Bill Clinton reappointed Alan Greenspan, and kept him as a core member of his economic team. Greenspan, while still fundamentally monetarist in orientation, argued that doctrinaire application of theory was insufficiently flexible for central banks to meet emerging situations.

The crucial test of this flexible response by the Federal Reserve was the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, which the Federal Reserve met by flooding the world with dollars, and organizing a bailout of Long-Term Capital Management. Some have argued that 1997-1998 represented a monetary policy bind, just as the early 1970s had represented a fiscal policy bind, and that while asset inflation had crept into the United States (which demanded that the Fed tighten the money supply), the Federal Reserve needed to ease liquidity in response to the capital flight from Asia. Greenspan himself noted this when he stated that the American stock market showed signs of irrationally high valuations.^[11]

In 2000, Alan Greenspan raised interest rates several times. These actions were believed by many to have caused the bursting of the dot-com bubble. In late 2001, as a decisive reaction to the September 11 attacks and the various corporate scandals which undermined the economy, the Greenspan-led Federal Reserve initiated a series of interest rate cuts that brought the Federal Funds rate down to 1% in 2004. His critics, notably Steve Forbes, attributed the rapid rise in commodity prices and gold to Greenspan's loose monetary policy^{[citation needed]}, and by late 2004 the price of gold was higher than its 12 year moving average; these same forces were also blamed for excessive asset inflation and the weakening of the dollar^{[citation needed]}. These policies of Alan Greenspan are blamed by the followers of the Austrian School for creating excessive liquidity, causing lending standards to deteriorate, and resulting in the housing bubble of 2004-2006.

Currently, the American Federal Reserve follows a modified form of monetarism, where broader ranges of intervention are possible in light of temporary instabilities in market dynamics. This form does not yet have a generally accepted name.^{[citation needed]}

In Europe, the European Central Bank follows a more orthodox form of monetarism, with tighter controls over inflation and spending targets as mandated by the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union under the Maastricht Treaty to support the euro.^[12] This more orthodox monetary policy followed credit easing in the late 1980s through 1990s to fund German reunification, which was blamed for the weakening of European currencies in the late 1990s.^{[citation needed]}

Current state[link]

Critics point to policies that add "restraint on compensation increases" as a consequence of Monetarism.^[13]

Since 1990, the classical form of monetarism has been questioned because of events which many economists have interpreted as being inexplicable in monetarist terms, namely the unhinging of the money supply growth from inflation in the 1990s and the failure of pure monetary policy to stimulate the economy in the 2001-2003 period. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, argued that the 1990s decoupling was explained by a virtuous cycle of productivity and investment on one hand, and a certain degree of "irrational exuberance" in the investment sector. Economist Robert Solow of MIT suggested that the 2001-2003 failure of the expected economic recovery should be attributed not to monetary policy failure but to the breakdown in productivity growth in crucial sectors of the economy, most particularly retail trade. He noted that five sectors produced all of the productivity gains of the 1990s, and that while the growth of retail and wholesale trade produced the smallest growth, they were by far the largest sectors of the economy experiencing net increase of productivity. "2% may be peanuts, but being the single largest sector of the economy, that's an awful lot of peanuts."

There are also arguments which link monetarism and macroeconomics, and treat monetarism as a special case of Keynesian theory. The central test case over the validity of these theories would be the possibility of a liquidity trap, like that experienced by Japan. Ben Bernanke, Princeton professor and current chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has argued that monetary policy could respond to zero interest rate conditions by direct expansion of the money supply. In his words, "We have the keys to the printing press, and we are not afraid to use them." Another popular economist, Paul Krugman, has advanced the counterargument that this would have a corresponding devaluationary effect, like the sustained low interest rates of 2001-2004 produced against world currencies.^{[citation needed]}

Historian David Hackett Fischer, in his study The Great Wave, questioned the implicit basis of monetarism by examining long periods of secular inflation that stretched over decades. In doing so, he produced data which suggest that prior to a wave of monetary inflation, there is a wave of commodity inflation, which governments respond to, rather than lead. Whether this formulation undermines the monetary data which underpin the fundamental work of monetarism is still a matter of contention.^{[citation needed]}

Monetarists of the Milton Friedman school of thought believed in the 1970s and 1980s that the growth of the money supply should be based on certain formulations related to economic growth. As such, they can be regarded as advocates of a monetary policy based on a "quantity of money" target. This can be contrasted with the monetary policy advocated by supply-side economics and the Austrian School which are based on a "value of money" target (albeit from different ends of the formula).^{[citation needed]} Austrian economists criticise monetarism for not recognizing the citizens' subjective value of money and trying to create an objective value through supply and demand.

These disagreements, along with the role of monetary policies in trade liberalization, international investment, and central bank policy, remain lively topics of investigation and arguments.

Gold standard[link]

Most monetarists oppose the gold standard. Friedman, for example, viewed a pure gold standard as impractical.^[14] For example, whereas one of the benefits of the gold standard is that the intrinsic limitations to the growth of the money supply by the use of gold or silver would prevent inflation, if the growth of population or increase in trade outpaces the money supply, there would be no way to counteract deflation and reduced liquidity (and any attendant recession) except for the mining of more gold or silver under a gold or silver standard.

Influential proponents[link]

See also[link]

References[link]

Further references[link]

• Andersen, Leonall C., and Jerry L. Jordan, 1968. “Monetary and Fiscal Actions: A Test of Their Relative Importance in Economic Stabilization,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review (November), pp. 11–24. PDF (30 sec. load: press +) and HTML.
• _____, 1969. “Monetary and Fiscal Actions: A Test of Their Relative Importance in Economic Stabilization — Reply,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review (April), pp. 12–16. PDF (15 sec. load; press +) and HTML.
• Brunner, Karl, and Allan H. Meltzer, 1993. Money and the Economy: Issues in Monetary Analysis, Cambridge. Description and chapter previews, pp. ix-x.
• Cagan, Phillip, 1965. Determinants and Effects of Changes in the Stock of Money, 1875-1960. NBER. Foreword by Milton Friedman, pp. xiii-xxviii. Table of Contents.
• Friedman, Milton, ed. 1956. Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money, Chicago. Chapter 1 is previewed at Friedman, 2005, ch. 2 link.
• _____, 1960. A Program for Monetary Stability. Fordham University Press.
• _____, 1968. "The Role of Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, 58(1), pp. 1-17 (press +).
• _____, [1969] 2005. The Optimum Quantity of Money. Description and table of contents, with previews of 3 chapters.
• Friedman, Milton, and David Meiselman, 1963. “The Relative Stability of Monetary Velocity and the Investment Multiplier in the United States, 1897-1958,” in Stabilization Policies, pp. 165–268. Prentice-Hall/Commission on Money and Credit, 1963.
• Friedman, Milton, and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, 1963a. "Money and Business Cycles," Review of Economics and Statistics, 45(1), Part 2, Supplement, p p. 32-64. Reprinted in Schwartz, 1987, Money in Historical Perspective, ch. 2.
• _____. 1963b. A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. Princeton. Page-searchable links to chapters on 1929-41 and 1948-60
• Johnson, Harry G., 1971. "The Keynesian Revolutions and the Monetarist Counter-Revolution," American Economic Review, 61(2), p p. 1-14. Reprinted in John Cunningham Wood and Ronald N. Woods, ed., 1990, Milton Friedman:: Critical Assessments, v. 2, p p. 72- 88. Routledge,
• Laidler, David E.W., 1993. The Demand for Money: Theories, Evidence, and Problems, 4th ed. Description.
• Schwartz, Anna J., 1987. Money in Historical Perspective, University of Chicago Press. Description and Chapter-preview links, pp. vii-viii.
• Warburton, Clark, 1966. Depression, Inflation, and Monetary Policy; Selected Papers, 1945-1953 Johns Hopkins Press. Evaluation in Anna J. Schwartz, Money in Historical Perspective, 1987.

External links[link]

• "Monetarism" at The New School's Economics Department's History of Economic Thought website.
• Monetarism by Allan Meltzer. Concise encyclopedia of economics on Econlib
• Monetarism^{[dead link]} from the Economics A-Z of The Economist

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007)

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (May 2010)

The Basics
The Basics at the Oxford Art Factory, 2010
Background information
Origin	Melbourne, Australia
Genres	Rock
Years active	2002–present
Labels	Independent, Albert Records
Associated acts	Gotye, Down Hills Home, Dog With Wheels, Blood Red Bird
Website	The Basics Official Website
Members
Wally De Backer Kris Schroeder Tim Heath
Past members
Michael Hubbard
Notable instruments
Lead guitar, drums, bass guitar.

The Basics ( /ˈbæzɪtʃ/ BAZZ-ich) are a three-piece band from Melbourne, Australia, formed by Wally De Backer and Kris Schroeder in 2002. Their style has been described as anything from 'indie-pop' to 'rock'n'roll' to 'pop-rock', though their records show they span a wide range of genres, including reggae, ska, country, and electro-pop. They are "recognised as one of Australia's hardest-working bands".^[1]

With close to 1000 shows in their ten-year career, their live performances are well-known for their sense of humour and energy.^[2]

Formation[link]

The Basics were formed after Kris met Wally at a party in Melbourne.^[3] The event was to see off the young aspiring producer, who was about to depart for Los Angeles, and together with a number of musician friends, the two jammed on some blues-rock standards. Later that night, they bonded over a mutual love of The Beatles, 70s and 80s cartoon theme songs and old Sierra adventure games.

Initially, they played around Melbourne as an acoustic guitar/drums combo, starting at The Opposition in Frankston and the House of Fools in Footscray, where in late 2002 they met Michael Hubbard and later invited him to join them on electric guitar.^[4] Though lacking any real experience with the instrument, Kris willingly purchased his first bass guitar, and the trio was born. During this time, the group start performing songs with more complicated three-part harmony.

During late 2002 and early 2003, The Basics recorded and released an album called Get Back through MGM Distribution. They began what was to become regular tours of the East and West coasts of Australia.

2004-2005: Current lineup[link]

Tim Heath joined the group in June 2004, after Michael decided to pursue his solo career, which has included being one half of Down Hills Home.^[4] Tim was reportedly the only person to reply to an advertisement in Melbourne's Beat Magazine looking for a new guitarist. Tim apparently answered the advertisement - which said the applicant "must have a love of 50s and 60s rock'n'roll" - thinking that he would be meeting "a couple of old guys to play with on the weekends over some beers". They soon recorded For Girls Like You.

The Basics in 2005 continued to tour and play small festivals, and after releasing For Girls Like You through MGM Distribution, they departed for a national tour of Australia, which lasted for two months and took them to every Australian state and territory. Stuart Padbury, a young Melbourne sound engineer, joined them on much of this tour. On returning, the band began demonstrating songs for a new album.

2006-2009: Touring and soundtracks[link]

In 2006, The Basics began recording what was to become known as Stand Out/Fit In. Taking several months, it was not completed until the end of the year, despite intentions to have it released in June. Instead, they held a successful 'album preview', where each of the tracks was demonstrated in 'rough form' accompanied by a music video for each (produced by Melbourne photographic artist James Bryans). The band also talked about the origins of the songs. This event brought a lot of attention to the band for the idea's originality. They pre-released a radio single 'Just Hold On' from the album. The band were invited to play the hugely popular Homebake Festival in Sydney, where they received a great response, after being introduced onto the stage by a short stocky Asian guy with big calves ("one of the highlights" wrote The Daily Telegraph).

In 2007, the band departed on a tri-state residency which saw them play Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane every week for the month of April - a bold move which brought further attention to the band for its original idea.^[5] Riding on the wave of this tour, Schroeder, De Backer and Heath departed on their first overseas tour which saw them performing 26 shows around Japan, Norway and the United Kingdom.^[6] They also toured twice more up the East Coast, one of which was with popular Japanese band The Bawdies. Their song 'Rattle My Chain' was used in a series of commercials for Volvo Australia. The song 'Hey There!' featured in the British film The Bank Job - starring Jason Statham - and was used as the backing for a February 2007 short film directed by Tim Longhurst called The Rip. Their song 'Better' was featured in a surfing documentary about the invention of the shortboard in 1967.

In 2008, the band appeared on Australia's Channel 9 for Australia Day celebrations, performing two of their songs - 'Just Hold On' and 'Hey There!' - to an estimated audience of 2 million. Securing an Australian Government grant, they embarked on a two-month tour of Australia, specifically targeting "culturally underprivileged groups" in rural and regional schoolchildren and Indigenous communities. The programme had them holding masterclasses and performing alongside Indigenous groups in the remote Northern Territory and Queensland.^[7][8] Their initiative also had them raising money for the charity Lifeline^{[disambiguation needed ]}, their contribution to which was recognised with a plaque at the end of the tour. Season two of Californication starring David Duchovny featured their cover of the classic 'Have Love, Will Travel', most famously covered by 'The Sonics'.

In 2009, The Basics for the first time enjoyed the support of Australian radio network Triple J, which had reportedly snubbed the band's previous material.^[9] The singles 'With This Ship' and 'Like A Brother' were added to the station's playlist, and momentum carried The Basics overseas for a second tour of the United Kingdom and Norway, and also a series of shows in Dublin, Ireland. They were joined by the longtime front-of-house engineer Stuart Padbury, who had been mixing them since 2005. The band was often seen in the Grafton Street Mall in Dublin, busking to promote their concerts there. Their second show in Oslo, Norway, saw the band perform with Hot Tub, one of the members of the Norwegian boy band "Boyzvoice", in his first performance for several years. Season Eight of Scrubs featured the song 'Lookin' Over My Shoulder'.

Despite all this promise, the band's album Keep Your Friends Close - produced and part-recorded by Peter Cobbin at London's Abbey Road Studios - though enjoying many favourable reviews,^{[10][11][12][13]} failed to impress Richard Kingsmill, music director of Triple J. This effectively ended the band's apparent upward spiral and the resulting album launch tour was reportedly "trying".

2010: Hiatus and live album[link]

In 2010, following the band's fourth stint at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, and the recording of a yet-unreleased live album, an indefinite hiatus was announced on the band's websites. This was in part due to the impending release of a new album produced by Wally for his Gotye project, and also to reported tensions within the band following the previous year's disappointments.

However, this hiatus was soon broken with a two-month residency at the Northcote Social Club in Melbourne, which saw an apparent return to form.^[14] The band's EP "Wait For You" enjoys airplay on Triple J.^[15] The Basics also played a one-off show at Sydney's Oxford Art Factory.^[16]

On 20 August 2010, The Basics released their fourth LP /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/, available free and exclusively from their website for digital download^[17]. The band had reportedly moved to expand their listenership through this free giveaway, though 300 "Deluxe" CD/vinyl versions have been printed. /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/ was recorded at the Northcote Social Club on 6 February, "in front of a live studio audience", and like the previous record, was mixed by Peter Cobbin at Abbey Road Studios. Technically a self-titled album, the phonetics spell out the accurate pronunciation of the band’s name. Kris Schroeder: "For years we’ve worked at bringing our live energy into the studio and thus far it’s been a bit hit-and-miss. Our trick this time was to pull a switcheroo and bring the studio to us instead; the result is the best and closest to us we’ve sounded yet."

Melbourne thespian and Dog With Wheels bassist David Bramble - friends with Heath from university days - has occasionally joined the band on tour, playing keys, often while sporting a large moustache. Other guests have included Jake Mason (saxophone), also of Cookin' on 3 Burners and The Bamboos^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Gideon Brazil (saxophone, flute), Simon Imrei (guitar and vocals) and Monty MacKenzie (saxophone).

Covers have often made an appearance from various sources: to date, some of the bands covered have been Cream, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Police, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, New Kids on the Block, Richard Berry, Sonny Curtis and The Crickets, JJ Cale, Harry Nilsson, Bill Scott, Ryan Adams and The Coasters (via The Beatles for their cover of Three Cool Cats).

Members[link]

Current

• Wally De Backer - drums, vocals (2002-present)
• Kris Schroeder - bass, vocals (2002-present)
• Tim Heath - guitar, vocals (2004-present)

Former

• Michael Hubbard - guitar, vocals (2002-2004)

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Get Back (15 January 2004)
• Stand Out/Fit In (5 May 2007)
• Keep Your Friends Close (25 September 2009)
• /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/ (20 August 2010)

EP[link]

• For Girls Like You (11 July 2005)
• Lookin' Over My Shoulder (10 February 2007)
• Like A Brother (5 June 2009)
• Wait For You (21 May 2010)

Singles[link]

• Call It Rhythm & Blues (20 August 2004)
• Just Hold On
• With This Ship (22 February 2009)

Upcoming projects[link]

The band is taking a three year hiatus, with an announced return to the stage together in early 2014. Wally De Backer launched Making Mirrors under his Gotye act in August 2011, Tim Heath will be touring and recording with Blood Red Bird, and Kris Schroeder recorded a solo EP titled, Patience in the Face of Control, before leaving Australia to work with the Red Cross in Kenya for a two year sabbatical.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website
• Myspace Website

Scott B. Sumner is an economist and currently Professor of Economics at Bentley University. Sumner received a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1985. His published research focuses on prediction markets and monetary policy.^[1] In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Sumner began authoring a blog where he vocally criticized the view that the United States economy was stuck in a liquidity trap.^[2] Sumner advocates that central banks such as the Federal Reserve create a futures market for the level of nominal gross domestic product (NGDP, or nominal income), and adjust monetary policy to achieve a nominal income target on the basis of information from the market. Monetary authorities generally choose to target other metrics, such as inflation, unemployment, the money supply or hybrids of these, and rely on information from the financial markets, indices of unemployment or inflation, etc. to make monetary policy.^[3] A school of economists known as market monetarism has coalesced around Sumner's views; The Daily Telegraph international business editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has referred to Sumner as the "eminence grise" of market monetarism.^[4] In 2012, the Chronicle of Higher Education referred to Sumner as "among the most influential" economist bloggers, along with Greg Mankiw of Harvard University and Paul Krugman of Princeton University.^[5]

Sumner contends that inflation is "measured inaccurately and doesn’t discriminate between demand versus supply shocks," and that "Inflation often changes with a lag ... but nominal GDP growth falls very, very quickly, so it'll give you a more timely signal stimulus is needed."^[6] He argued that monetary policy can offset fiscal austerity policies such as those pursued by the British government in the wake of the 2007 economic crisis.^[6]

In April 2011, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand responded to Sumner's critique of inflation targeting, arguing that a nominal GDP target would be too technically complicated, and make monetary policy difficult to communicate.^[7] By November 2011, however, economists from Goldman Sachs were advocating that the Federal Reserve adopt a nominal income target. Nathan Sheets, a former top official at the Federal Reserve and the head of international economics at Citigroup, proposed that the Federal Reserve adopt a nominal consumption target instead.^[8]

Sumner has argued that one cannot account for the impact of fiscal policy without first considering how monetary policy may affect the outcome; fiscal stimulus may not succeed if monetary policy is tightened in response. Economic journalists have referred to this as the Sumner Critique, akin to the Lucas critique.^[9] Summarizing this thinking, The Economist suggested:

...the economy will almost certainly not grow at a 5.3% rate no matter what Congress does. Arguments to the contrary are subject to what econ bloggers have come to call the Sumner Critique, after economist and blogger Scott Sumner. It is reasonable to assume, by this critique, that the Federal Reserve has a general path for unemployment and inflation in mind and it will react to correct any meaningful deviation from that path. A 5.3% growth rate is well outside the range of current Fed projections. Growth that rapid would almost certainly bring down unemployment quite quickly, triggering Fed nervousness over future inflation and prompting steps to tighten monetary policy.^[10]

See also[link]

• Market monetarism
• Nominal income target

References[link]

External links[link]

• Faculty webpage at Bentley University
• Blog
• Marginal revolutionaries, The Economist, 31 Dec 2011

The Right Honourable Tony Benn
President of the Stop the War Coalition
Incumbent
Assumed office 21 September 2001
Vice President	Lindsey German
Preceded by	Office created
Secretary of State for Energy
In office 10 June 1975 – 4 May 1979
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson James Callaghan
Preceded by	Eric Varley
Succeeded by	David Howell
Secretary of State for Industry
In office 5 March 1974 – 10 June 1975
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Peter Walker (at DTI)
Succeeded by	Eric Varley
Chairman of the Labour Party
In office 20 September 1971 – 25 September 1972
Leader	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Ian Mikardo
Succeeded by	William Simpson[disambiguation needed ]
Minister of Technology
In office 4 July 1966 – 19 June 1970
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Frank Cousins
Succeeded by	Geoffrey Rippon
Postmaster General
In office 15 October 1964 – 4 July 1966
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Reginald Bevins
Succeeded by	Edward Short
Member of Parliament for Chesterfield
In office 1 March 1984 – 7 June 2001
Preceded by	Eric Varley
Succeeded by	Paul Holmes
Majority	24,633 (46.5%)
Member of Parliament for Bristol South East
In office 20 August 1963 – 9 June 1983
Preceded by	Malcolm St Clair
Succeeded by	Constituency Abolished
Majority	1,890 (3.5%)
In office 30 November 1950 – 17 November 1960
Preceded by	Stafford Cripps
Succeeded by	Malcolm St Clair
Majority	13,044 (39%)
Personal details
Born	Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (1925-04-03) 3 April 1925 (age 87) Marylebone, London, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour
Spouse(s)	Caroline DeCamp (m. 1949–2000)
Children	Stephen, Hilary, Melissa, Joshua
Alma mater	New College, Oxford
Religion	Agnostic[1] – United Reformed Church[citation needed]
Website	Official website
Military service
Service/branch	Royal Air Force
Rank	Pilot Officer
Battles/wars	World War II

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC (born 3 April 1925), formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, is a British Labour Party politician, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for fifty years, and was also a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.

His successful campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963.^[2] In the Labour Government of 1964–1970 he served first as Postmaster General, where he oversaw the opening of the Post Office Tower, and later as a notably "technocratic" Minister of Technology. In the period when the Labour Party was in Opposition, Benn served for a year as the Chairman of the Labour Party. In the Labour Government of 1974–1979, he returned to the Cabinet, initially serving as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy, retaining his post when James Callaghan replaced Wilson as Prime Minister. During the Labour Party's time in Opposition during the 1980s, he was seen as the party's prominent figure on the left, and the term "Bennite" has come to be used in Britain for someone of a more radical left-wing position.^[3]

Benn has topped several polls to find the most popular politician in Britain.^[4] He has also been described as "one of the few UK politicians to have become more left-wing after holding ministerial office."^[5] Since leaving Parliament, Benn has become more involved in the grass-roots politics of demonstrations and meetings, as opposed to parliamentary activities, and has been the President of the Stop the War Coalition for the last decade. He has also been a vegetarian since the 1970s.

Biography[link]

Early life and family[link]

Benn was born in London on 3 April 1925.^[6] Benn's paternal grandfather was John Benn (a successful politician who had been created a baronet in 1914) and his father William Wedgwood Benn was a Liberal Member of Parliament who later crossed the floor to the Labour Party. He was appointed Secretary of State for India by Ramsay MacDonald in 1929, a position he held until 1931. He was elevated to the House of Lords, with the title of Viscount Stansgate in 1941; the new wartime coalition government was short of working Labour peers in the upper house.^[7] From 1945 to 1946, he was the Secretary of State for Air in the first majority Labour Government.

Both his grandfathers, John Benn (who founded a publishing company)^[8] and Daniel Holmes, were also Liberal MPs (respectively, for Tower Hamlets, Devonport and Glasgow Govan).^[9] Benn's contact with leading politicians of the day thus dates back to his earliest years as a result of his family's profile; he met Ramsay MacDonald when he was five,^[10] David Lloyd George when he was twelve and Mahatma Gandhi in 1931, while his father was Secretary of State for India.

Benn's mother Margaret Eadie (née Holmes) (1897–1991), was a dedicated theologian, feminist and the founder President of the Congregational Federation. She was a member of the League of the Church Militant, which was the predecessor of the Movement for the Ordination of Women – in 1925 she was rebuked by Randall Thomas Davidson, then-Archbishop of Canterbury, for advocating the ordination of women. His mother's theology had a profound influence on Benn, as she taught him that the stories in the Bible were based around the struggle between the prophets and the kings and that he ought in his life to support the prophets over the kings, who had power, as the prophets taught righteousness.^[11]

Benn was a pupil at Westminster School and later studied at New College, Oxford where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics and was elected President of the Oxford Union in 1947. In later life, Benn attempted to remove public references to his private education from Who's Who; in the 1975 edition his entry stated "Education—still in progress". In the 1976 edition, almost all details of his biography were omitted save for his name, jobs as a Member of Parliament and as a Government Minister, and address; the publishers confirmed that Benn had sent back his draft entry with everything else struck through.^[12] In the 1977 edition, Benn's entry disappeared entirely.^[13] In October 1973 he announced on BBC Radio that he wished to be known as "Mr Tony Benn" and his book Speeches from 1974 is credited to "Tony Benn".

Benn met US-born Caroline Middleton DeCamp (born 13 October 1926, Cincinnati, Ohio) over tea at Worcester College in 1949 and nine days later he proposed to her on a park bench in the city. Later, he bought the bench from Oxford City Council and installed it in the garden of their home in Holland Park. Tony and Caroline had four children—Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua, and ten grandchildren. Caroline Benn died of cancer on 22 November 2000, aged 74, after a prominent career as an educationalist.^[14]

In July 1943, Benn joined the Royal Air Force.^[15] His father and brother Michael (who was later killed in an accident) were already serving in the RAF in 1943. Whilst holding the rank of pilot officer, Tony Benn served as a pilot in South Africa and Rhodesia.^[16]

Benn's children have also been active in politics; his first son Stephen served as an elected Member of the Inner London Education Authority from 1986 to 1990. His second son Hilary served as a councillor in London, and stood for Parliament in 1983 and 1987, finally becoming the Labour MP for Leeds Central in 1999. He served as Secretary of State for International Development from 2003 to 2007, and then as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs until 2010. This makes him the third generation of his family to have sat in the Cabinet of the United Kingdom, a rare distinction for a modern political family in Britain. Benn's granddaughter Emily Benn fought and ultimately lost the seat of East Worthing and Shoreham in 2010,^[17] becoming the Labour Party's youngest ever candidate in the process.^[18] Tony Benn is a first cousin once removed of the late actress Dame Margaret Rutherford.^[19]

Member of Parliament[link]

Following his Second World War service as a pilot in the Royal Air Force, Benn worked briefly as a BBC Radio producer. On 1 November 1950, he was unexpectedly selected to succeed Sir Stafford Cripps as the Labour candidate for Bristol South East, after Cripps stood down because of ill-health, and won the seat in a by-election on 30 November 1950.^[20] Anthony Crosland helped him get the seat as he was the MP for nearby South Gloucestershire at the time. Upon taking the oath on 4 December 1950^[21] Benn became the youngest MP, or "Baby of the House" for one day, being succeeded by Thomas Teevan, who was two years younger but took his oath a day later.^[22] He became the "Baby" again in 1951, when Teevan was not re-elected. In the 1950s, Benn held middle-of-the-road or soft left views, and was not associated with the young left wing group around Aneurin Bevan.^[23]

Peerage reform[link]

Benn's father had been created Viscount Stansgate in 1942 when Winston Churchill increased the number of Labour peers to aid political work in the House of Lords; at this time, Benn's elder brother Michael was intending to enter the priesthood and had no objections to inheriting a peerage. However, Michael was later killed in an accident while on active service in the Second World War, and this left Tony Benn as the heir to the peerage. He made several attempts to renounce the succession, but they were unsuccessful.^[23]

In November 1960, Viscount Stansgate died, and as a result Benn automatically became a peer and was thus prevented from sitting in the House of Commons. Insisting on his right to abandon his peerage, Benn fought to retain his seat in a by-election caused by his succession on 4 May 1961. Although he was disqualified from taking his seat, the voters of Bristol South-East re-elected him regardless. An election court found that the voters were fully aware that Benn was disqualified, and declared the seat won by the Conservative runner-up, Malcolm St Clair, who was at the time also the heir presumptive to a peerage.^[2]

Outside Parliament, Benn continued his campaign, and eventually the Conservative Government of the time accepted the need for a change in the law.^[24] The Peerage Act 1963, allowing renunciation of peerages, was given the Royal Assent and became law shortly after 6 pm on 31 July 1963. Benn was the first peer to renounce his title, at 6.22 pm that day. Malcolm St. Clair, fulfilling a promise he had made at the time of his seating, then accepted the office of Stewardship of the Manor of Northstead, thereby disqualifying himself from the House (outright resignation being impermissible). Benn returned to the Commons after winning a by-election on 20 August 1963.^[23]

In government (1964–1970)[link]

In the 1964 Government of Harold Wilson, Benn was appointed Postmaster General; during his time in that position, he oversaw the opening of what was then the UK's tallest building, the Post Office Tower, and the creations of the Postal Bus Service and Girobank. He proposed issuing stamps without the Sovereign's head, but this met with private opposition from the Queen. Instead, the portrait was reduced to a small profile in silhouette, a format that is still used on commemorative stamps today.^[25] Benn also led the government's campaign to close down the many off-shore pirate radio stations of the time, a campaign that forms the centrepiece of the 2009 film The Boat That Rocked, and was responsible for introducing the Marine Broadcasting Offences Bill.^[26] By the time the bill became law in 1967, Benn had been promoted to the post of Minister of Technology, which included specific responsibility for overseeing the development of Concorde and the formation of International Computers Ltd. The period also saw government involvement in industrial rationalisation, and the merger of several car companies to form British Leyland. ^[27] Labour lost the 1970 election to Edward Heath's Conservatives, and upon Heath's application to join the European Economic Community, Benn campaigned in favour of a referendum on the UK's membership. The Shadow Cabinet voted to support a referendum on 29 March 1972, and as a result Roy Jenkins resigned as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

In government (1974–1979)[link]

In the Labour Government of 1974, Benn was appointed Secretary of State for Industry, where he set up worker cooperatives in struggling industries, the best known being at Meriden, which kept Triumph Motorcycles in production until 1983. In 1975, he was appointed Secretary of State for Energy, immediately following his ultimately unsuccessful campaign for a "No" vote in the referendum on the UK's membership of the EEC. By his own admission in his diary (25 October 1977), Benn "loathed" the EEC; he claimed it was "bureaucratic and centralised" and "of course it is really dominated by Germany. All the Common Market countries except the UK have been occupied by Germany, and they have this mixed feeling of hatred and subservience towards the Germans".^[28]

Harold Wilson resigned as Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister in March 1976. Benn entered the subsequent leadership contest and came fourth with 37 votes in the first ballot. Benn then withdrew from the second ballot and supported Michael Foot for the leadership, although James Callaghan eventually won. Despite not receiving his support in the vote, Callaghan kept Benn as Energy Secretary. Later in the autumn of 1976, there was a sterling crisis, and then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey sought to gain a loan from the International Monetary Fund. Benn publicly circulated the Cabinet minutes from the 1931 National Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald, which cut unemployment benefits in order to secure a loan from American bankers and resulted in the inadvertent splitting of the Labour Party. Callaghan allowed Benn to put forward his "alternative economic strategy", which consisted of a siege economy. However this plan would later be rejected by the Cabinet.^[29]

Move to the Left[link]

By the end of the 1970s, Benn had migrated to the left-wing of the Labour Party. He attributed this political shift to his experience as a Cabinet Minister in the 1964–1970 Labour Government. Benn wrote:

As a minister, I experienced the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government. Compared to this, the pressure brought to bear in industrial disputes is minuscule. This power was revealed even more clearly in 1976 when the IMF secured cuts in our public expenditure. These lessons led me to the conclusion that the UK is only superficially governed by MPs and the voters who elect them. Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is, and some new Chartist agitation might be born and might quickly gather momentum.^[30]

Benn's philosophy consisted of a form of syndicalism, economic planning, greater democracy in the structures of the Labour Party and observance of Party conference decisions by the Party leadership;^[31] he was vilified in the right-wing press, and his enemies implied that a Benn-led Labour Government would implement a type of East European socialism.^[32] Conversely, Benn was overwhelmingly popular with Labour activists. A survey of delegates at the Labour Conference of 1978 found that by large margins they supported both Benn for the leadership and many Bennite policies.^[33]

He publicly supported Sinn Féin and the unification of Ireland, although in 2005 he suggested to Sinn Féin leaders that Sinn Féin abandon its long-standing policy of not taking seats at Westminster. Sinn Féin argue that to do so would recognise Britain's claim over Northern Ireland, and the Sinn Féin constitution prevents its elected members from taking their seats in any British-created institution.^[34]

In opposition[link]

In a keynote speech to the Labour Party Conference of 1980, shortly before the resignation of party leader James Callaghan and election of Michael Foot as successor, Benn outlined what he envisaged the next Labour Government would do. "Within days", a Labour Government would grant powers to nationalise industries, control capital and implement industrial democracy; "within weeks", all powers from Brussels would be returned to Westminster and then they would abolish the House of Lords by creating one thousand peers and then abolishing the peerage. Benn received tumultuous applause from the audience.^[35]

Tony Benn speaking at the Glastonbury Festival in 2008

In 1981, he stood for election against the incumbent Denis Healey for the post of Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, disregarding the appeal from Michael Foot either to stand for the leadership, or to abstain from inflaming the party's divisions. Benn defended his decision with insistence that it was "not about personalities, but about policies." The contest was extremely closely fought in the summer of 1981, and Healey eventually won by a margin of barely 1%. The decision of several moderate left-wing MPs, including Neil Kinnock, to abstain from supporting Benn triggered the split of the Campaign Group from the Left of the Tribune Group.^[36]

After Argentina had invaded the Falkland Islands in April 1982, Benn argued that the dispute should be settled by the United Nations and that the British Government should not send a task force to recapture the islands. The task force was sent and the Falklands were soon back in British control. In a subsequent debate in the Commons, Benn's demand for "a full analysis of the costs in life, equipment and money in this tragic and unnecessary war" was rejected by Margaret Thatcher, who stated that "he would not enjoy the freedom of speech that he put to such excellent use unless people had been prepared to fight for it".^[37]

In 1983, Benn's Bristol South East constituency was abolished by boundary changes, and he subsequently lost the battle to stand in the new seat of Bristol South to Michael Cocks. Rejecting offers from the new seat of Livingston in Scotland, Benn contested Bristol East, losing to Conservative candidate Jonathan Sayeed in what was perceived to be a shock result. He was selected for the next Labour seat to fall vacant, and was elected as MP for Chesterfield in a by-election after Eric Varley resigned his seat to head Coalite. On the day of the by-election, 1 March 1984, The Sun newspaper ran a hostile feature article "Benn on the Couch" which purported to be the opinions of an American psychiatrist.^[38] In the intervening period, since Benn's defeat in Bristol, Michael Foot had stepped down after the general election in June 1983 (which saw Labour return a mere 209 MPs) and was succeeded in October of that year by Neil Kinnock.^[39]

Benn was a prominent supporter of the 1984–1985 UK miners' strike and of his long-standing friend, the National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill. Some miners, however, considered Benn's 1977 industry reforms to have caused problems during the strike; firstly, that they led to huge wage differences and distrust between miners of different regions; and secondly, that the controversy over balloting miners for these reforms made it unclear as to whether a ballot was needed for a strike or whether it could be deemed as a "regional matter" in the same way that the 1977 reforms had been.^[40][41]

In June 1985, three months after the miners admitted defeat and ended their strike, Benn introduced the Miners' Amnesty (General Pardon) Bill in the Commons which would have extended an amnesty to all miners imprisoned during the strike. This would have included two men convicted of murder (later reduced to manslaughter) for the killing of David Wilkie, a taxi driver driving a non-striking miner to work in South Wales during the strike.^[42]

Benn later stood for election as Party Leader in 1988, against Neil Kinnock, following Labour's third successive defeat in the 1987 general election, and lost again, on this occasion by a substantial margin.^[43] During the Gulf War, he visited Baghdad to persuade Saddam Hussein to release the hostages who had been captured.^[44] He was also one of the very few MPs to oppose the Kosovo War. In 1991, with Labour still in opposition and another general election due by June 1992, he proposed the Commonwealth of Britain Bill, which involved abolishing the British Monarchy in favour of the United Kingdom becoming a "democratic, federal and secular commonwealth"; in effect, a republic with a written constitution. It was read in Parliament a number of times until his retirement at the 2001 election, but never achieved a second reading.^[45] He presented an account of his proposal in Common Sense: A New Constitution for Britain.^[46]

Retirement[link]

Tony Benn about to join the March 2005 anti-war demonstration in London

Tony Benn did not stand at the 2001 general election; as he explained it, he was "leaving parliament in order to spend more time on politics".^[47] Along with Edward Heath, Benn was given the privilege of being able to continue using the House of Commons Library and Members' refreshment facilities by the Speaker. Shortly after his retirement, he was approached by the Stop the War Coalition, and was asked to become its President, an offer he accepted.^[44] He thus became a leading figure of the British opposition to the War on Iraq, and in February 2003 he travelled to Baghdad to again meet, and interview, Saddam Hussein. The interview was shown on British television.^[48] He also spoke out against the Iraq war at the February 2003 protest in London organised by the Stop the War Coalition, attended by over 1 million people.^[49] In February 2004 and 2008, he was re-elected President of the Stop the War Coalition.^[50]

He has toured with a one-man stage show and also appears a few times each year in a two-man show with folk singer Roy Bailey. In 2003, his show with Bailey was voted 'Best Live Act' at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.^[51] In 2002 he opened the "Left Field" stage at the Glastonbury Festival. In October 2003, Benn was a guest of British Airways on the last-ever scheduled Concorde flight from New York to London.^[52] In June 2005, Benn was a panellist on a special edition of BBC1's Question Time. The special edition was edited entirely by a school age film crew selected by a BBC competition.^[53]

On 21 June 2005, Benn presented a programme on democracy as part of the Channel 5 series Big Ideas That Changed The World, he presented a left-wing view of democracy as the means to pass power from the "wallet to the ballot". He argued that traditional social democratic values were under threat in an increasingly globalised world in which powerful institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Commission remain unelected and unaccountable to those whose lives they affect daily.^[54]

Tony Benn and Giles Fraser speaking at Levellers’ Day, Burford, 17 May 2008

On 27 September 2005, Benn was taken ill at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton and taken by ambulance to the Royal Sussex County Hospital after being treated by paramedics at the Brighton Centre. Benn reportedly fell and struck his head. He was to be kept in hospital for observation, but was described as being in a "comfortable condition".^[55] He was subsequently fitted with an artificial pacemaker to help regulate his heartbeat.^[56] In a list compiled by the magazine New Statesman in 2006, he was voted twelfth in the list of "Heroes of our Time".^[57]

In September 2006, Benn joined the "Time to Go" demonstration in Manchester the day before the start of the final Labour Conference with Tony Blair as Party Leader, with the aim of persuading the Labour Government to withdraw troops from Iraq, to refrain from attacking Iran and to reject replacing the Trident missile and submarines with a new system. He spoke to the demonstrators in the rally afterwards along with other politicians and journalists, including George Galloway and members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.^[58] In 2007, he appeared in an extended segment in the Michael Moore film Sicko giving comments about democracy, social responsibility, and health care.

Wikinews has related news: Wikinews interviews: Tony Benn on U.K. politics

A poll by the BBC2 The Daily Politics programme in January 2007 selected Benn as the UK's "Political Hero" with 38% of the vote, beating Margaret Thatcher with 35% and five other contenders including Alex Salmond, Leader of the Scottish National Party; Clare Short, Independent MP; Neil Kinnock, previous Labour Party Leader; Norman Tebbit, previous Conservative Party Chairman and Shirley Williams, one of the 'gang of four' who founded the Social Democratic Party.^[4]

In the 2007 Labour Party leadership election, Tony Benn backed the left-wing MP John McDonnell in his ultimately unsuccessful bid. In September 2007, Benn called for the government to hold a referendum on the EU Reform Treaty.^[59] In October 2007, at the age of 82, and when it appeared that a general election was about to be held, Benn reportedly announced that he wanted to stand, having written to his local Kensington and Chelsea Constituency Labour Party offering himself as a prospective candidate for the seat held by the Conservative Malcolm Rifkind.^[60][61] No election, however, was ultimately held in 2007, and the Kensington and Chelsea seat was abolished.

Benn on the cover of Dartford Living, Sept 2009

In September 2008, Benn appeared on the DVD release for the Doctor Who story The War Machines with a vignette discussing the Post Office Tower; he became the second Labour politician, after Roy Hattersley to appear in a feature on a Doctor Who DVD.^[62] Also in 2008, Benn appeared on track 12 "Pay Attention to the Human" on Colin MacIntyre's The Water album.^[63]

At the Stop the War Conference 2009, he described the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as "Imperialist war(s)" and discussed the killing of American and allied troops by Iraqi or foreign insurgents, questioning whether they were in fact freedom fighters, and comparing the insurgents to a British Dad's Army, saying "If you are invaded you have a right to self defence, and this idea that people in Iraq and Afghanistan who are resisting the invasion are militant Muslim extremists is a complete bloody lie. I joined Dad's Army when I was sixteen, and if the Germans had arrived, I tell you, I could use a bayonet, a rifle, a revolver, and if I'd seen a German officer having a meal I'd have tossed a grenade through the window. Would I have been a freedom fighter or a terrorist?"^[64]

In an interview published in Dartford Living in September 2009, Benn was critical of the Government's decision to delay the findings of the Iraq War Inquiry until after the General Election, stating that "people can take into account what the inquiry has reported on but they’ve deliberately pushed it beyond the election. Government is responsible for explaining what it has done and I don’t think we were told the truth."^[65] He also stated that local government was strangled by Margaret Thatcher and hadn't been liberalised by New Labour.^[65]

During the autumn of 2009, Tony Benn was again admitted into hospital and as a result of this, "An Evening with Tony Benn", scheduled to take place at London's Cadogan Hall was cancelled.^[66] He resumed a tour of these shows in 2010. He has most recently performed his show "The Writing on the Wall" with Roy Bailey at St Mary's Church, Ashford, Kent (Sept 2011) as part of the arts venue's first Revelation St Mary's Season. ^[67] In July 2011 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University Of Glamorgan, Wales.^[68]

In November 2011, it was reported that Benn had moved out of his home in Holland Park Avenue, London and taken up residence in a smaller £750,000 flat nearby which benefits from a warden.^[69]

Diaries and biographies[link]

Benn is a prolific diarist: eight volumes of his diaries have been published (the first six collected as ISBN 0-09-963411-2, the penultimate available as ISBN 0-09-941502-X), he stopped writing them following his stroke and in April 2012 was working on the final volume due for publication in September 2012. Collections of his speeches and writings were published as Arguments for Socialism (1979), Arguments for Democracy (1981), (both edited by Chris Mullin), Fighting Back (1988) and (with Andrew Hood) Common Sense (1993), as well as Free Radical: New Century Essays (2004). In August 2003, London DJ Charles Bailey created an album of Benn's speeches (ISBN 1-904734-03-0) set to ambient groove.

He has also made public several episodes of audio diaries he made during his time in Parliament and after retirement, entitled 'The Benn Tapes', broadcast originally on BBC Radio 4. Short series of these have been played periodically on BBC Radio 7.^[70] A major biography was written by Jad Adams and published by Macmillan in 1992; it was updated to cover the intervening 20 years and reissued by Biteback Publishing in 2011. Tony Benn: A Biography (ISBN 0-333-52558-2) A more recent 'semi-authorised' biography, with a foreword by Benn, was published in 2001: David Powell, Tony Benn: A Political Life, Continuum Books (ISBN 978-0826464156). An autobiography, Dare to be a Daniel: Then and Now, Hutchinson (ISBN 978-0099471530), was published in 2004.

There are substantial essays on Benn in both the Dictionary of Labour Biography by Phillip Whitehead, Greg Rosen [ed], Politicos Publishing, 2001 (ISBN 978-1902301181) and in Labour Forces: From Ernie Bevin to Gordon Brown, Kevin Jefferys [ed], I. B. Taurus Publishing, 2002 (ISBN 978-1860647437). Michael Moore dedicates his book Mike's Election Guide 2008 (ISBN 978-0141039817) to Tony Benn with: "For Tony Benn, keep teaching us".^[71]

Plaques[link]

During his final years in Parliament, Benn placed three plaques within the Houses of Parliament as well as one in Highbury, North London (to commemorate the Peasants' Revolt of 1381).^[72]

Two of the three parliamentary plaques are in the 'Suffragettes room' (next to the Central Lobby).

The first was placed in 1995 and reads as follows:

"This plaque is dedicated/ with respect, gratitude and affection/ to the many hundreds of thousands of men and women/ who lived and worked on these islands/ and who devoted themselves to the advancement of/ freedom, civil liberties, social justice and democracy/ who campaigned for popular representation in Parliament

Including: Wat Tyler, John Ball, William Tyndale, Thomas More, the Levellers, John Lilburne, William Walwyn, The Diggers, Gerard Winstanley, Tom Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Robert Owen, The Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists, Keir Hardie, Annie Besant, Charles Bradlaugh, Robert Tressell, the Suffragettes and Constance Markievicz

And many others whose names have never/ been recorded in our history"

The second plaque was placed in 1996 and is dedicated to all who work within the Houses of Parliament.

The third plaque is dedicated to Suffragette Emily Wilding-Davison and was placed in the broom cupboard next to the Undercroft Chapel within the Palace of Westminster where Davison is said to have hidden during the 1911 census in order to establish her address as the House of Commons.^[73]

See also[link]

• Labour Representation Committee
• Socialist Campaign Group

References[link]