Hilary Benn MP

WORKING HARD FOR LEEDS CENTRAL

Deputy Leadership - Why I am standing

Campaign Launch Speech at Toynbee Hall
May 18th, 2007

Thank you for coming here this morning. It has been a hectic few days at Westminster. Days in which Labour MPs have had their say about the future leadership of our party.

But now it’s time for you - the grassroots of our party - to have your say, because this election will not, and must not, be decided in the corridors of power. It must be decided by Labour people in the communities and workplaces of Britain.

Our new Deputy Leader should be someone who can offer leadership, someone who can give frank advice to Gordon Brown, and someone who will be able to work with others. But above all we need a Deputy who is trusted in the party to be the voice of the grassroots. A voice for Labour values around the cabinet table.

It’s a job I want to do. It’s a job I believe I can do. So it is with great pride - and humility - that I formally launch my campaign to become Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

There could be few places more appropriate to do so than in this hall, in the heart of London’s East End which has such a proud history and is now being transformed once again by social and economic development.

A place where the pioneers of our movement helped form the ideas and beliefs that changed our society forever. And the place where this Labour Government announced our ambition to end child poverty in a generation.

The Labour movement is in my bones. It’s been my whole life. I have been a constituency activist, a councillor and a council deputy leader. Before I became an MP, I worked for the trade union movement and for the last 5 years I have been given the privilege of putting Labour values to work as a Minister.

The beliefs that inspired me to join the Labour party, the same beliefs that moved all of you to join, burn just as brightly inside me today as they did when I signed that membership form at the age of 17. So today while I am proud to have been part of a truly great Labour government, I have lost none of the socialist belief that the world can be made better by our endeavour. And after 10 years of government we need to take a fresh look at our country.

Why is it that for all the difference we have made together, if you grow up here in the East End you will die many years earlier than if you grow up just eleven tube stops further west?

Why is it that in workplaces up and down the country, including in the heart of the world’s most successful financial capital, there is a still a gap between how much women earn and men earn?

Why is it that every day children starve to death in a world perfectly capable of feeding every mouth or die of diarrhoea because they have no clean water to drink ? Human lives extinguished without ever having the opportunity to shine and to illuminate our world?

In every case it is because of poverty and inequality. And whether it is in inner-city Leeds or in the poorest countries on earth, this terrible waste of human potential should make us weep.

But it wasn’t tears that urged millions of people to march for this cause in before the G8. It was a simple but passionate belief that we can change the world. And it is by putting that belief to work that millions of children who would never have otherwise seen the inside of a classroom have had the chance of an education. That thousands of women who would have died in childbirth now have the chance to see their children grow. That countless individuals who would otherwise have perished from disease or hunger, now have a chance to live their lives.

I simply ask this question. If we can inspire millions to believe that no-one need suffer in the deserts and fertile plains of Africa, can we not also inspire people here in Britain to believe that we can banish poverty from our own country once and for all?

Fundamental change occurs when you can inspire people to make that journey with you. We saw that when the Make Poverty History campaigners marched step by step together. We see it, too, in our own history.

Clem Atlee and William Beveridge, who both lived and worked in this very hall, created the National Health Service and the welfare state. They wrought these great changes because they were inspired by the millions returning from the war; the millions who were determined that the Britain they had saved from fascism would be better than the Britain of the dark 1930s. And in the same way - in 1997 - millions were moved to our cause because they had tired of the me-first society.

And if we are to win another great victory then we have today to be the party of ambition for a better future. We have to bring back the 4 million voters we have lost since 1997. We have to win back the council seats we have lost. We have to urge back the members who have left. We have to inspire a new generation of supporters to our cause.

A Labour party will only be able to help the country to flourish if it can persuade people to join our campaign for change. Conservative governments entrench inequality. Labour’s task is to bury it by changing our society. But we cannot do this alone. The first task for the new deputy leader, working with a chair of the party chosen by its members, will be to put Labour at the centre of a new and a more straightforward kind of politics.

The second task is to build a politics that gives people power to shape their own communities, and to encourage our local parties to reach out and get involved in those communities. Because when people see Labour politics as a way of helping them deal with their problems and realising their hopes and ambitions to better themselves and their country, then it will be to Labour they will turn to when they want to change things. And a party that gets things done locally – and nationally – is a party that will keep winning elections.

And finally, I want us to be unapologetic about our values. They matter just as much as our policies and they should shape them. After ten years in Government we need to be bolder about saying what sort of society it is we are trying to build.

• I want a country that acts on its concern about poverty and injustice, whether in Africa or in constituencies like the one we are in today.
• I want a society that places as much importance on our children and on how we relate to one another as it does on economic stability.
• I want a politics in which we ask people to give something back, as well as asking things of others;
• I want a culture in which we celebrate what people do to contribute, whether in public service, trade unions, business, or in their local community;
• I want a world that puts justice and working with others at the heart of our foreign policy.
• I want – we want - a Labour Government which not only redistributes wealth, but which redistributes power and opportunity because that’s how we will make society fairer and keep winning the people’s trust.

I would like to end today with a challenge to Labour party members, trade unionists and to our supporters: Don’t let this be a contest just about politicians – me or any of the other candidates telling you what we think. Let it be a contest in which you say what you think and you want.

And that’s why in a few moments we will sit down to talk. That’s why, later today, I will take part in a telephone conference with party and union members from across the country.

So let the debate begin. Let us discuss ideas. Let us talk straightforwardly about the future we want. Let us set out the practical steps we can take together to make Britain a better, fairer country.

No politician can create this society alone, as real leadership means having the humility to listen as well as the courage to act.

I believe that the corridors of power belong to the British people. Making sure your voice is heard along them is why I am standing to be Deputy Leader of our Party. Let’s change this country together.