Britain's labour movement can ill afford to lose two brave, principled and honest comrades of the calibre of Bob Crow and Tony Benn.

Hailing from opposite sides of the class divide, they were united in their commitment to peace and socialism.

Both were hounded and misrepresented by the capitalist media, but each was loved and respected by huge numbers of working people outside the Westminster bubble.

While Benn was a lifetime Labour Party member and Crow had no time for it, they worked together on broad organisations such as the Stop the War Coalition and enjoyed a warm friendship.

Crow's hostility to right-wing Labour leaders didn't translate into a refusal to work with socialists within Labour and Benn's declaration that he had been born into the Labour Party and would die in it did not prevent him from working with all on the left, declining suggestions that he distance himself from this individual or that group.

His observation that the labour movement had too many socialist parties and not enough socialists led him to identify with the non-sectarianism of the Morning Star for which he was a tireless advocate.

When invited fairly regularly to contribute to the Sky TV review of the papers, he would take along a couple of copies of our paper to ensure proper balance.

He wrote a weekly column in the Morning Star, bringing his articles together in a book, and was always available to comment on the day's news for our reporters.

Benn's approach was idiosyncratic. He was not a Marxist despite his admiration for someone he dubbed an Old Testament prophet.

The principles he upheld - increasingly firmly as he grew older - were that wars were bad for people and the world and that working people were basically decent and poorly served by the political system.

For the Establishment media and politicians he was a constant thorn in their side, asking awkward questions and making pertinent observations that chimed with people's awareness.

His observation in a TV studio that people were "suffering underneath that lot" when a gaggle of pro-war worthies were whooping and cheering live coverage of the Nato blitz on Baghdad briefly deflated the armchair militarists.

They couldn't demean him as a wimp since he had served his country in the RAF in the second world war, retaining a healthy hatred of racism and fascism.

Benn made mistakes and owned up to them, not least his previous attachment to nuclear power, recognising the intrinsic links between Britain's civil programme and atomic weapons and nailing his colours to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament mast.

His direct, unscripted speeches won him huge audiences throughout Britain, even in areas of mythical Middle England, who lapped up his alternative politics.

Benn had no complex philosophical basis to his socialist views, basing everything on his understanding of democracy, both political and economic.

He suggested that every politician should be asked five simple questions - What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How can we get rid of you?

No wonder the Establishment hated him, whatever sweet words they gush now that he is dead.

Tony Benn and his comrade Bob Crow knew where their loyalties lay and what their goal was.

It is sad to lose them, but the examples they set will be emulated by countless others to pursue their struggle.