William Wedgwood Benn, 1st Viscount Stansgate

Air Commodore William Wedgwood Benn, 1st Viscount Stansgate PC, DSO, DFC (10 May 1877 – 17 November 1960) was a British Liberal politician who later joined the Labour Party. He was Secretary of State for India between 1929 and 1931 and Secretary of State for Air between 1945 and 1946. He was the father of Tony Benn.

Background and education
Born in Hackney, Benn was the second son of Sir John Benn, 1st Baronet. He was educated at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris and at University College, London.

Political career
In 1906 Benn was elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for the St George's division of Tower Hamlets in east London, a seat he held until 1918. He served under H. H. Asquith as a Lord of the Treasury (government whip) between 1910 and 1915. In 1918 he was elected for Leith in Scotland, a seat he held until March 1927, when he resigned from the Liberal Party and from Parliament. In 1928 Benn re-entered parliament as Labour member for Aberdeen North. He was Secretary of State for India between 1929 and 1931 in Ramsay MacDonald's second government and was sworn of the Privy Council in 1929. However, he refused to follow MacDonald into the National Government coalition with the Conservatives, and at the 1931 election he lost his seat to John George Burnett. He returned to parliament in 1937 when he was elected for Gorton near Manchester.

In 1942 Benn was raised to the peerage as Viscount Stansgate, of Stansgate in the County of Essex. Two years later he was appointed Vice President of the Allied Control Commission which was charged with reconstructing a democratic government in Italy. In 1945 he became Secretary of State for Air in Clement Attlee's Labour government, a position he held until October 1946. He then sat as a backbench Labour peer until his death fourteen years later.

Military career
Benn was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Middlesex Yeomanry in 1915 (later promoted to temporary Captain) and served with the Royal Naval Air Service during the First World War, seeing service at Gallipoli. He was awarded the DSO in 1917 and the DFC in 1918. The citation for the latter was: "A gallant observer of exceptional ability. After setting out on a bombing raid, the Scout machines assigned to act as an escort became separated, and it then became necessary for the bombing planes to proceed on their task without support. Captain Benn's machine took the lead, followed by three other bombers, and succeeded in dropping his bombs (direct hits) on an enemy aerodrome. On the return journey the bombing machines were attacked by several enemy scouts, which were eventually driven away. Recently, this officer organised and carried out a special flight by night over the enemy's lines, under most difficult circumstances, with conspicuous success. He has at all times set a splendid example of courage" (21 September 1918). Also in September 1918 (night of 8–9 September) Benn was a pilot of Savoia-Pomilio SP.4 aeroplane, specially equipped for a parachute drop. This was the first military parachute/spy mission. The parachutist was Allesandro Tandura (1893 - 1937), who parachuted behind enemy lines in the vicinity of Piave river.

Although in his early 60s at start of the Second World War, Benn returned to military flying joining the Royal Air Force as a pilot officer. Following his promotion to Air Commodore, he served as Director of Public Relations at the Air Ministry.

Family
Lord Stansgate married Margaret, daughter of Daniel Holmes, in 1920. His eldest son Michael Benn was killed in the Second World War in 1944. Stansgate died at Westminster, London, in November 1960, aged 83, and was succeeded in the viscountcy by his second son, Tony Benn, who in 1963 succeeded in getting the law changed to allow him to disclaim the peerage.