William Wedgwood Benn, 1st Viscount Stansgate, DSO, DFC, PC (10 May 1877 – 17 November 1960) was a British Liberal politician who later joined the Labour Party.

During the 1924–29 parliament, which was dominated by a Conservative majority, he worked closely with a group of radical Liberal MPs that included Frank Briant, Percy Harris, Joseph Kenworthy and Horace Crawfurd to provide opposition to the government.

[3] However, he refused to follow MacDonald into the National Government coalition with the Conservatives, and at the 1931 election lost his seat to John George Burnett.

A master in the art of human contacts, passionately interested in international politics, Viscount Stansgate played a major role in bringing the newly independent countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa into the ranks of the IPU.

He was also instrumental in re-establishing the membership of parliaments of Eastern European countries, thus bringing the IPU nearer to its traditional objective – universality.

Although aged 37 at the time the First World War broke out, Benn was commissioned on 8 December 1914 as a second lieutenant in the Middlesex Yeomanry (Duke of Cambridge's Hussars).

Captain Benn's machine took the lead, followed by three other bombers, and succeeded in dropping his bombs (direct hits) on an enemy aerodrome.

Recently, this officer organised and carried out a special flight by night over the enemy's lines, under most difficult circumstances, with conspicuous success.

[17] Though in his early 60s at start of the Second World War, Benn returned to military flying, joining the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as a war-substantive pilot officer (on probation) on 27 May 1940, with the service number 79452.

Stansgate died at Westminster, London, in November 1960, aged 83, and was succeeded in the viscountcy by his second son, then known as Anthony Wedgwood Benn (1925–2014), who was successful in 1963 in changing the law to allow him to disclaim the peerage for life.

His youngest son, David Wedgwood Benn (1928–2017), a specialist in Russia and Eastern Europe, worked for the BBC's External Services for many years.