It takes powers which are permanent—this is not a temporary provisions — Tony Benn

"He was a very good Postmaster General, all those coloured stamps, still going well. Tonys obsessed with shop stewards. That is why he liked planning agreements, because they would be run by shop stewards. We were having a shadow cabinet meeting and I asked for any other business. There was a deep sigh because we knew Tony would have something. And he said, I have just attended a meeting of the Bristol Aerospace workers, I think it was, and they just passed a resolution saying that they should have the right to sack the management at a weeks notice. I said, why should they have a week? Why not give them just a weekend to clear out their lockers? I have always said about Tony that he immatures with age."

"It is appropriate that today, when we are told to celebrate the death of Socialism, 4.5 million names were recorded on a petition to the House expressing their commitment to the National Health Service--the greatest Socialist monument of that post-war Government. I was proud to sit at the end of that Government as a Back Bencher under Mr. Attlee as Prime Minister and Aneurin Bevan as Minister of Health. Today we have witnessed one of the regular funerals of Socialism. So many coffins for Socialism go through Fleet street every day that one wonders why the newspapers have to keep having these funerals. They have to do so because Socialism is not dead. Today Mr. Speaker had to rule--I think that he was unwise to do so--that because so many people supported the ambulance drivers the lists of their names could not all be brought to the House. I watched the Government Front Bench as box after box of petitions were brought in, showing the popular rejection of the Governments attitude towards the NHS. This is the first time that we have discussed Socialism in the nearly 40 years during which I have been here, and I strongly welcome it. I am not surprised that there were no buses coming from all over the country, as when Snowden moved his resolution, because the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) had tabled such a rotten motion. However, the motion has allowed this debate to take place. I have already ordered the entire debate from the sound archives of the House of Commons, because I have often said that if capitalism depended on the intellectual quality of the Conservative party it would end about lunchtime tomorrow. When the long speech of the hon. Member for Tatton is made available in Chesterfield and elsewhere, it will confirm my view that the ideas of capitalism are not well espoused and do not truthfully rest on the intellectual capacities of Conservative Members."

"[M]en who would rather go to jail than betray what they believe to be their duty to their fellow workers and the principles which they hold."

"[Written shortly after the death of Mao Zedong (the older Mao Tse Tung transliteration is used in the source)] In my opinion, he will undoubtedly be regarded as one of the greatest — if not the greatest — figures of the twentieth century: a schoolteacher who transformed China, released it from civil war and foreign attack and constructed a new society there. His influence throughout the world has been immense, based to some extent on power I suppose, but also on his tremendous achievements ... [H]e certainly towers above any other twentieth century figure I can think of in his philosophical contribution and his military genius."

"I heard from Jeremy Corybn in the House of Commons yesterday that the alleged cancellation of the world debt was a complete fraud, because a condition has been imposed that any country that had its debt cancelled had to privatise its assets; so that’s where the money will be made. I mean, if ever the Marxist critique of capitalism was correct, its on this. Somebody wrote in the “New Yorker” the other day, ‘Marx may have been wrong about communism, but he was certainly right about capitalism.’"

"Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise."