I read that Frank Field, champion of the poor and underprivileged, opponent of injustice and environmental destruction, Labour politician and cross bench peer died earlier this week. He was 81. What a loss.
I knew Frank when I was a teenager. At the time he was director of the Child Poverty Action Group, which he built into a formidable lobbying group, and my boyfriend’s parents were very involved with the Fabian Society and undertaking academic research on poverty. He would come to supper and I listened to animated conversations on society and how best to lift people out of poverty. Frank was not fashionable or a “yes man”. He defied categorisation. He joined the Young Conservatives at 16 but left over apartheid and joined Labour. He was one of Labour’s leading Brexiteers, supported tighter abortion controls and campaigned for the traditional rites of the Anglican Church. A few years after I had known him, he was elected as a Labour MP for Birkenhead, a position he held for nearly 40 years, resigning the whip in 2018 over anti-semitism and “nastiness” in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. He was hugely principled and never one for party politics and whips. If he thought something, he said it, even if it was unpopular. His politics were driven by a strong Anglo-Catholic faith rather than the group think of the time. He was friends with Margaret Thatcher, despite his socialist allegiance, and believed that state welfare payments were a trap that ensnared the poor and disadvantaged into a pattern of dependency and poverty that could pass from generation to generation. To break that cycle requires positive action and individuals to be supported to build by their own efforts. He believed in the widescale redistribution of wealth throughout society and campaigned for incentives to get people off welfare. He influenced all parties and urged each to think the unthinkable.
Looking back, exposure to people such as Frank at a formative age, were an important influence on my thinking and philosophy of life. It was no coincidence that, before coming to teaching, I spent some years working as an advice worker, my “bible” being the CPAG handbook on welfare benefits.
Frank Field was a one-off politician, a man of principle and strong Christian ethics who was a thorn in the side of many in power and a tireless advocate for those who had none. He may not have always been right, but he was sincere and motivated to make a positive difference to society, willing to work with politicians of any party that supported his beliefs.
I recently read his political memoir: Politics, poverty and belief (2023). It is a series of essays and should be read as such, else you risk being irritated by some repetition. I found it a fascinating insight into what feels like an increasingly rare breed of politician, a man of principle, unwilling to compromise and prepared to put up with the criticism and rejection of others in order to try to bring about change. Towards the end of his life he admitted the irony that he had enjoyed a fascinating life but not made much of a difference. His victories may have been minor, but I believe his influence was not.
In a 2022 interview he was asked how he wished to be remembered, a question that he brushed aside “Oh, I don’t expect to be remembered.”
The world needs more Franks.
The Accidental Ringer 