Terry Philpot writes: In the late 1960s Illtyd Harrington, later a leading light of the Greater London council, was a teacher at Daneford school, Bethnal Green. Tony Benn was one of a number of well-known people he invited to talk to the sixth form.
At the time, Benn was Harold Wilson's minister of technology, and for about 45 minutes he outlined the possibilities and opportunities that technology would bring, with the prospect of much greater leisure time. In putting forward this utopian vision, Benn treated his audience of working-class teenagers on level terms, able to understand and be inspired by the future he envisaged. And then he was off, maybe to meet ministers or industrialists. But you did feel that he might have thought this the most important event of his day.
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