Tony Benn

I did not know Tony Benn. I much regret that, and admired not only his persuasive eloquence, his ready humour, his enormous patience, his common touch, but his huge passionate conviction.

I did meet him, though, and will not easily forget it.

Twenty years ago he came to open a new toilet block at an infant school, and I was there to represent the local authority. Tony Benn talked and laughed easily with everyone. I was struck by how short a man he was. My imagination had given him a physique as vast and powerful as his rhetoric.

When the official moment came, he gave a short speech to open the new block. This was not a moment, he said, for celebration or self-congratulation. The children here had at last been given toilet facilities which should have been their right for a century. Having indoor toilets was something that we should be able to take for granted, not something we should celebrate as if it was a major achievement. Today's grand opening should please us, but should remind us of how slow progress had been for some people.

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others" was a Groucho Marx one-liner which seems to fit so many politicians. Tony Benn seemed to be drawing his convictions from something rather deeper than the latest focus group, the latest trend on Twitter.

I liked him a lot.