The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies Andy Beckett, journalist (The Guardian) and author
Event details
In the great revolutionary year of 1968, Tony Benn was a respectable Labour minister in his forties, and he was restless. While new social movements were shaking up Britain and much of the world, Westminster politics seemed stuck. It was time, he decided, for a different approach.
Over the next half century, the radicalized Benn helped forge a new left in Britain. He was joined by four other politicians, who would become comrades, collaborators and rivals: Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn.
For Andy Beckett, the story of these admired and loathed political explorers - both their sudden breakthroughs and long stretches in the wilderness - is the untold story of British politics in modern times. As he reveals, their project to create a radically more equal, liberal and democratic Britain has been much more influential than electoral history might suggest, and can be seen from the shape of our city life to the causes of our culture wars.
For their many detractors, this influence was and remains dangerous: a form of extremism that must be stamped out. But as these five searchers believed, in politics there is no total victory - nor total defeat.
This event is supported by the Public Lectures Fund.
About the speaker
Andy Beckett is a journalist for the Guardian and the author of The Searchers: Five Rebels, their Dream of a Different Britain, and their many enemies (Penguin, 2024), a study of Diane Abbott, Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone and John McDonnell. Beckett is also the author of Promised you a Miracle: How 1980-82 made Modern Britain (Penguin, 2016), When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the 1970s (Faber, 2009) and Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile's Hidden History (Faber, 2003)