Veteran UK politician Tony Benn speaks to St Paul's protest - London

First they ignore you, he tells his audience.

Then you are described as mad.

Then they send in the police and you are arrested for your pains. Later they will insist it was their idea all along.

Such is the path of progress. Mr Benn explains. As he salutes not a new politics. That, without saying, is for the place people of every age, the sinecure hunters PRs. New Labour. Re-branding. Those that fleece the public. At every turn. Bankers.

Mr Benn has come to town. And the 21st century dips back 500 years. Half a millennium.

Tony Benn, once a viscount, is speaking to a gathering on the steps of St Paul's. Where I hazard a guess the old Methodist is very happy.

Outside the church of England he would have dis-established.

This old man,dusty, who needs a hand in these his twilight days, whose equals Foot, Jenkins, Shore, Healey, Wilson a common man who once told him he immatures with age, Crosland and Castle, ashes and echoes of youth, a purpose, all gone but one his nemesis Denis, is treated with a respect most, especially of his age, do not often get.

Those who listen, on those steps, and we do listen, will not have been born when he was at his prime.

Though one must be careful when weighing value as Tony, once Anthony, Wedgwood Benn, famously once said he was leaving parliament to be more involved in politics - full time. Bristol and Chesterfield approved of its adopted son.

And the photographers do not crowd. Many want to shake his hand.

He does not egg on his audience. They must decide where next this movement goes. He says.

It is a short speech. A stump speech. But it is important.
History remembered and history in the making.

Then he is gone.