Tony Benn

I'm a great believer in crying. I think if you feel something strongly, you really ought to let it out.

I never thought I'd live in a time when the public was to the left of a Labour government.

Mind you, it's not difficult to be more ‘labour’ than New Labour.

I never thought I'd live in a time when the public was to the left of a Labour government.

But the idea developed because of the circumstances, so you have to deal with the circumstances.

There were six million unemployed, and when you have six millions unemployed anyone who wants to get into power has to find a scapegoat, and in this instance it was the Jews. It was an evil doctrine. No mistake about that.

I wrote an essay at 11 on the Spanish Civil War, attacking Franco, and the teacher wrote at the bottom: ‘This is disgusting'.

I can't say I want to be judged by what I own. My car is just a set of wheels. It's not being goody -goody. It's just in my nature. I'm just not interested.

The NHS is the most socialist thing we ever did. And phenomenal. I know it's hammered all the time, but to regard health as a national interest and not something left to the market was fantastic.

Covent Garden Soup. Mushroom. Do you know of it? It's marvellous.

Tony Benn, interviewed by Dave McCullough. Pics by Paul Slattery. Sounds music paper, 25 December 1982.

Love and friendship are the secret of happiness. When I got married, in 1949, my dad's advice was to keep a big balance of affection in the bank, because you are sure to need it.

welfare cuts… target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit …The poorest will be hit six times harder than the richest.

as we know from Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. And thirdly, it's far from being peaceful. All the plutonium from our civil nuclear power stations went to America to make warheads for the bombs. We were lied to about nuclear power.

I was in charge of nuclear power for a long time, and I remember when I was told that nuclear power was cheap, safe, and peaceful. It turns out nuclear power is three and a half times the cost of coal. Far from being safe, it's deadly dangerous…

The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers' profligacy

If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.

If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.

I always sob at the end of the film The Railway Children, when the father comes back from prison and the steam clears on the railway platform and his daughter runs towards him. Both sadness and great happiness bring out uncontrollable tears in me

Globalisation is not internationalism at all. It's the free movement of capital, but not the free movement of labour.