Tony Benn, born Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn, was one of the most prominent and controversial figures in twentieth century British politics. Born in 1925 to an upper-class family, Tony Benn's early life was immensely political. His father was a labour minister under Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald, and later became a Labour hereditary peer. When his father died, Tony Benn had to fight to renounce his peerage and remain in the elected lower house of the British Parliament, the House of Commons. In the 1960s, Benn served in the first two governments of Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1964-1970), first as Postmaster General and later as Minister of Technology. Over the course of his ministerial career, Benn moved further to the left. By the 1970s, he was one of the leading figures of the "New Left" in Britain, a movement which advocated for sweeping nationalization, redistribution, and industrial democracy (Wickham-Jones 2018, 36). It is in the realm of industrial democracy that Tony Benn initiated an experiment that was reminiscent of Antonio Gramsci's view of working class intellectualism. 

In February of 1974, the Labour Party, under the leadership of Harold Wilson, was returned to government after four years in opposition. Benn was appointed Minister for Trade and Industry, and tasked with implementing Labour's radical industrial program. During his time in the Department of Trade and Industry, the European Economic Community (EEC) offered the department 20,000 pounds to study the movement of labor into and out of Wales. This money was intended to be given to a professor, who would write a scholarly work on the subject. However, Benn instead chose to divide this money into grants of 500 pounds each and give them to Welsh shop stewards. These shop stewards were then supposed to take a sabbatical from their work, study their experience, and report on their situation (Parker). This decision was very controversial within his department. Tony Benn's permanent secretary, Sir Anthony Part, threatened to report him for corruption. Furthermore, the General Secretary of the Trade Unions Congress, Len Murray, also opposed the decision (Parker). 

Although Tony Benn drew some inspiration from Marx, referring to him as one of the "greatest minds in history," he never referred to himself as a Marxist or as a Gramscian (Benn 1980, 39). However, Benn's efforts to give research loans to shop stewards can be analyzed from a Gramscian perspective. According to Gramsci, intellectuals serve as a dominant group's "deputies" by securing the consent of the masses and framing the rule of the dominant class as natural and positive (Schwarzmantel 2015, 73). Gramsci postulated that in order to create a socialist society, a political party needed to create a stratum of intellectuals within the working class itself in order to establish a "counterhegemony." Tony Benn's efforts to fund shop steward research could be seen as an attempt to create this stratum of working class intellectuals. At this time, shop stewards in the UK often held political views that were more radical compared to that of the average trade unionist. By giving the ideas and proposals of these shop stewards legitimacy, it is possible that a new "common sense" could have been created. 

Works Cited 

Beech, Matt, Kevin Hickson, and Raymond Plant, eds. 2018. The Struggle for Labour’s Soul: Understanding Labour’s Political Thought since 1945. 2nd ed. London, England: Routledge.

Benn, Tony. 1980. Arguments for Socialism. Harlow, England: Penguin Books.

Parker, David. n.d. Tony Benn: Against the Tide (1973-1976).

Schwarzmantel, John. 2015. The Routledge Guidebook to Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. London, England: Routledge.