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

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.

Oh yessss absolutely!!!! Pathetic these days!

Healey and Kinnock Blair were/are traitors!

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.

They were losers rejected by the voters repeatedly until 1997

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

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

@@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.

​@robdewey317 not Denis Healey

He was a bully

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

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.

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

Still one of the funniest moments ever

that's the Lord Viscount Stansgate to you!

Socialists have never been keen on democracy

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.

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

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

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

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

I think it's Jack Dromey

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

Nothing like Corbyn.

Yeah, dream ticket for the Tories!

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

@@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.

Key phrase a "dream" ticket

@@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.

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

Much greater than Corbyn !!!

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

@@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.

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

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

​@@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.

That was the language within the party

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

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

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

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