Damned in Parliament for retaining her U.S. citizenship after marrying a Brit, Cincinnatian Caroline DeCamp Benn nevertheless embraced her adopted country with the Socialist zeal that husband, Tony, embodied. Best known as Carol, Mrs. Benn died in Charing Cross Hospital in London on Wednesday after a long struggle with cancer. She was 74.

        A left-winger from a conservative Cincinnati Republican family, Mrs. Benn encountered Anthony Neil Wedgewood Benn at Oxford University in 1948.

“We met on Monday and were engaged on Saturday,” she recalled during a visit to Cincinnati. “Sometime later, he broke it to me gently about being a peer.”

        They married in 1949 and built complementary public careers as Great Britain recovered from World War II, she in democratizing state education and he in the House of Commons.

        One of Mrs. Benn's primary targets was the national exam that divided students in state schools into industrial and college-prep programs at age 11. She advocated the comprehensive, neighborhood school that mixed everyone and prepared students for whatever they might choose.

        “I credit it to her Huguenot blood, the dissenting tradition,” Mr. Benn said Thursday in an interview. “It was in her blood, and her head was strong enough to translate it into action. Her intellect was far, far sharper than mine.”

        When he contended for Labor Party leadership, parliamentary traditionalists muttered again about Mrs. Benn's citizenship and the possibility of a prime minister with an American wife.

        It never happened; Mr. Benn remained staunchly on the left while Labor moved right.

        Meanwhile, Carol Benn taught student teachers at London University; tutored English in evening programs to immigrants hoping to enter England's Open University; lectured at Kensington and Hammersmith Further Education College; and served on the Inner London Education Authority for seven years, overseeing hundreds of schools.

        Mrs. Benn was that authority's representative on the board of governors at Imperial College, co-founder of the Campaign for Comprehensive Education, member of the Campaign for the Advancement of State Education and president of the Socialist Education Association.

        Carol Benn earned undergraduate degrees from Vassar College and the University of Cincinnati and a master's from University College, London.

        Always a Cincinnatian, Mrs. Benn remained close with school and college chums and returned often, usually for May Festival. Those visits continued even as cancer weakened her.

        Friends attributed her long survival to her fighting spirit; she praised Britain's National Health Service, created by Labor after World War II.

        “It was both,” said Hillsdale (now Seven Hills) classmate Marilyn Logan, of Clifton Heights.

        She described Mrs. Benn as an accepting person whose friends ranged from radical feminists to former debutantes “and that part of Carol was wonderful and it was real.”

        Mr. Benn devoted his public life to the House of Commons, even refusing the family's hereditary title when his father died in 1960. Viscount Stansgate was not who Tony Benn wanted to be. The peerage would have forced him to leave his beloved Commons for the virtually powerless House of Lords as his Socialist father had in 1942.

        Eventually, Mr. Benn was able to disclaim the title for life and return to Commons where he held various ministries and served as a cutting, articulate critic of Tory governments.

        Last year, the Benns celebrated the election of their second son, Hilary, to Parliament; Tony Benn, Labor's longest-serving member, said Thursday that he will retire at the next election.

        Life wasn't all politics and causes. Unfailingly gracious, Carol Benn headed an urban household with four children and a welcome to visiting Cincinnatians.

        Mrs. Benn is survived by her husband; daughter, Melissa; sons, Stephen, Hilary and Joshua, all in Great Britain; 10 grandchildren; a sister, Nancy Mitchell, of Indian Hill; and a brother, Graydon, a former Enquirer reporter, of Elk Rapids, Mich.

        The funeral will be private. A memorial gathering will be next year. Mr. Benn asked that any donations go to groups supporting cancer patients.

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