Setting the record straight on the career of Tony Benn

From: Richard Barrand, Shepley, West Yorkshire.

I READ Chris Moncrieff’s obituary article (The Yorkshire Post, March 15) about Tony Benn with great interest, being only three years younger and having been very much aware of his political activity throughout my own life. I could not understand how he managed to serve as a pilot during the war having been born in April 1925, and then to win a DSO and DFC and also be back in Oxford to be president of the Union in 1947. I therefore did a bit of research myself and with the aid of my computer learned that, in fact, it was his father who had served with such distinction in the war and that Tony Benn had only joined up in July 1943 as an Aircraftsman and been commissioned in March 1945 to serve in South Africa and Rhodesia. He then resigned his commission to get into Oxford immediately after the war.

From: Robert Chapple, High Street, Nawton, York.

TONY BENN joined the RAF (VR) in 1943 and underwent flying training in Southern Rhodesia between 1944-45. This would qualify him for the Defence Medal he is wearing in your photograph.

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Just after receiving his wings he returned to England in 1945 and transferred to the Fleet Air Arm, volunteering for service in the Far East. This did not materialise and he was demobbed later in 1945.

His father William Wedgwood Benn served in the First World War and it was he who was awarded the DFC and DSO.

Your researcher did not mention Tony Benn’s Yorkshire ancestors. In 1794 his five times great grandfather Julius Benn married Betty Lupton at St Peter’s Church, Leeds. There are more Julius Benns back to 1729 in the parish registers of Tong and Batley.

From: Nigel F Boddy, Fife Road, Darlington.

WITH Tony Benn, you always knew what he stood for before he even told you, but you longed to hear him tell you, because you knew he would bewitch you with his words.

From: Tim Mickleburgh, Boulevard Avenue, Grimsby.

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THE death of Tony Benn has brought some surprising appreciations. Benn was the Left’s equivalent of Margaret Thatcher, capable of arousing the same emotions from his opponents. Sadly Thatcher won the politics, though not the arguments. A Benn government would have pulled us out of the EU, and abolished Trident.

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