Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), originally known as Anthony Wedgwood Benn, but later as Tony Benn, was a British politician who was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 47 years between the 1950 and 2001 general elections and a Cabinet minister in the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in the 1960s and 1970s. Originally a 'moderate', he was identified as being on the party's hard left from the early 1980s, ideologically identifying as a democratic socialist.