Tony Benn was a great champion of working people. Loved seemingly universally, it troubled him in later life that he could be well regarded by the Sunday Telegraph.

"If I'm a national treasure in the Sunday Telegraph, something's gone wrong," he said in the last diaries.

I interviewed Tony a few times over the years. The last time for the Morning Star was three years ago at his house in Holland Park. He was fragile then but still a lucid thinker. The aim of the interview was to look at contemporary issues and particularly a point he had made in his diaries of 1977 about political change running in 40-year cycles, with the Thatcherite neoliberal model taking over in 1979 from the social democratic corporatist model set in place by the post-war Clement Attlee Labour government.

Prior to Attlee, there had been the great reforming Liberal government of 1908. Before that, the corn laws upheavals of the 1870s.

Tony did not have a clear idea of what the next change would be but lived in the belief that it was coming soon and would be for the better.

Tony was first and foremost a democrat, with a real belief in the potential of education and the human spirit.

It was democracy that he felt really frightened the ruling class.

He was right, because if there ever was a population that was truly educated and informed those who continue to reap profits at the expense of everyone else could no longer prosper.

Many of Benn's socialist ideas - such as workers' councils running enterprises, or taking public control of much of industry - are as relevant today as they were many years ago when he first raised them.

He never trusted the nuclear industry, recalling how it had lied to him when he was a minister about an accident that happened at a power station in the 1950s.

Tony was also an opponent of the European Union.

He objected to the transfer of powers from sovereign states, the lack of accountability and the fact that it was basically run by bankers.

In his opposition to the EU he found many allies on the Tory right, not least the late Alan Clark.

Tony's life was a journey that took him from the centre to the left of politics. In the 1950s he was very much the spin doctor in chief for then Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell. He began to move left in the 1960s and '70s when serving in office under first Harold Wilson and then James Callaghan.

Tony seemed to despise Wilson, coming to the conclusion that he stood for nothing much beyond personal political survival. A bit harsh maybe.

Hostilities broke out toward the end of the Callaghan government of the late 1970s, with a virtual civil war ensuing after defeat in 1979.

A group of left-wing thinkers congregated around Tony, coming up with radical new socialist policies for government. Unfortunately, these did not come to pass.

Tony lost the deputy leadership contest with Denis Healey in 1981. The despicable soon-to-become Social Democratic Party founders stayed just long enough to cast their votes for Healey in what proved a narrow victory.

Tony stayed on as an MP, losing his Bristol seat in 1983 but then being elected for Chesterfield. After 50 years, he finally left Parliament in 2001, notably quipping that he wanted to spend more time on politics.

There were others no doubt glad that Tony never became prime minister. It was even said that the security services were frightened of him becoming PM as they had nothing on him.

Tony gives a brilliant account of life in and out of government in his diaries running from 1940 to 2010. The only sadness is that the final diaries, A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine, were cut short by illness, preventing a day-to-day account of the coalition. He instead summarises things in a 20-page essay.

In the diaries he also reflects on his own life and on being driven to try to improve life for all humanity.

He does though have some pangs of guilt as to whether he spent too much time on work and should have given more to his wife and family. He was struck hard by the loss of his wife Caroline in 2000 but had immense pride in all of their children.

He struck up some important friendships in later life such as with newsreader Natasha Kaplinski and actress Saffron Burrows. Ruth Winstone, who brilliantly edited the diaries, was also a steadfast friend for much of his life.

Ruth was there on the day of my last interview with him. Tony though showed me out and I can still remember that kindly, considerate man framed in the doorway waving goodbye.

True to form I bumped into him again the next day at the TUC march in Hyde Park.

All who have known Tony Benn will value the experience, a truly selfless person who tried to make the world a better place for all who live in it.

Paul Donovan blogs at www.paulfdonovan.blogspot.com.