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 .