William Wedgewood Benn (1877-1960)

William Wedgwood Benn was MP for Leith during one of the most crucial periods in its history. I write not of Mr Borland’s decision to expand his portfolio beyond darts into television repairs, but of the area’s amalgamation with Edinburgh.

Local author Daniel Gray continues his trawl through famous names from Leith’s past...

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For 77 years from 1833, Leith had remained independent. Self-governing, this port town was able to reinvest the vast revenues seeping from its ports in local projects which bred civic pride. Leith’s tram system was completed ahead of the capital’s, and Edinburgh Council set about learning lessons from the affair with all the attention to detail of a blind elephant crocheting.

When the merger came, it had to be forced. A 1920 referendum saw 30,000 people vote against Leith becoming part of Edinburgh, while just 5,000 favoured the reunion. That same year, though, the move was imposed by central government. Benn, who had become the local Liberal MP in 1918, vehemently opposed this arranged marriage and campaigned tirelessly for Leith’s independence.

Rebellious veins
Though a titled Londoner, Benn identified with the locale and its people from his arrival. Perched to the far left of the Liberal Party, his politics seemed to suit this hotbed of trade union militancy and working class radicalism. A year before Leith’s dockers walked out in 1913, Benn had outraged his own government by raising funds for striking London shipbuilders. Rebellion coursed through his veins, the principle of speaking up for what he believed in his most cherished; at university fellow students threw him out of a window for opposing the Boer War.

This was not to be the last time Benn went airborne for his principles. Though a government member when World War One began, he resigned to join the forces, eventually becoming a flying ace. In Italy, he took part in an operation which, for the first time, dropped a spy behind enemy lines. A shower of medals followed, earning him the word count-sapping title of Air Commodore William Wedgwood Benn, 1st Viscount Stansgate PC, DSO, DFC.

Tony Benn
His time here ended in 1927, though it was brought about by political, not local, factors. In his increasingly left-wing views, he had simply outgrown Lloyd George’s Liberal Party, and was next to appear as Labour MP for Aberdeen North, his slogan ‘The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and I am standing as a Socialist’. Testament to the profound effect EH6 had on his life and career came in 2002 when his son, Tony Benn, became an impassioned supporter of the ‘Keep Leith’ campaign. Just as Benn had influenced Leith, so too had Leith influenced the evolution of British socialism’s First Family. ν

Next time: John Cormack (1894–1978), protestant agitator and local politician