 Benn 's father had been created Viscount Stansgate in 1942 when Winston Churchill increased the number of Labour peers to aid political work in the House of Lords ; at this time , Benn 's elder brother Michael was intending to enter the priesthood and had no objections to inheriting a peerage . However , Michael was later killed in an accident while on active service in the Second World War , and this left Benn as the heir to the peerage . He made several unsuccessful attempts to renounce the succession . 
