Tony Benn, who died eight years ago today, was a political giant. As well as a wonderful socialist MP and campaigner, he was a leading public educator who, through his books, speeches, and interventions, shaped what socialism in Britain is perhaps more than any other figure in the past fifty years.

Benn’s socialism reflected the wave of political gains by the working classes and the huge struggles that took place in the decades after World War II — including the waves of decolonization, the creation of the welfare state, the campaigns against the Vietnam War and other wars, the struggles for civil rights by the black population in the United States and the nationalist community in Northern Ireland, and a long period of rising workers’ militancy including the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders “work-in” and the historic miners’ strike of 1984–85.

As a result, Benn’s socialism was broad-ranging, rightly linking economic struggles with important social struggles and the need to see socialism as an internationalist movement through his work for global justice and peace.