Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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his belief that those in positions of economic, social and political power should always be asked five questions: — “What power have you got?” — “Where did you get it from?” — “In whose interests do you use it?” — “To whom are you accountable? — “How do we get rid of you?”
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I think his favorite of the questions—as a political figure who delighted in the give and take of campaigning, the debates, the canvasses, the counts in his initial constituency of Bristol South East and in the historic mining constituency of Chesterfield that he represented in the final decades of his remarkable career—was: “How do we get rid of you?”
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“Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system,” Benn explained. “Only democracy gives us that right. That is why no one with power likes democracy,” he would continue. “And that is why every generation must struggle to win it and keep it—including you and me, here and now.”