Frank Field was unusual among politicians – he put principles above party, often in defiance of Labour policy
“ANTI-poverty campaigner Frank Field has been one of my political heroes throughout his four decades in Parliament. His only mistake – which he wears like a hair shirt – was to back Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.”
I wrote these words in 2018 when this most honourable of Honourable Members quit the Labour Party in disgust over its blatant anti-Semitism.
He had nominated Corbyn in the hope he would be crushed in the contest.
His principled resignation stood as a rebuke to those who continued to serve under Corbyn, including the present Labour leader.
This was not the first time this rigorously honest Labour politician had fallen out with his own party.
Lord Field of Birkenhead, who died on Tuesday aged 81 after suffering cancer, waged a lifelong crusade against low pay and child poverty.
He blamed mass immigration for cheap labour and criticised the poverty traps created by the welfare state.
Field refused to see the poor as Labour “voting fodder”.
His aim as director of the Child Poverty Action Group was to untangle chaotic tax and welfare rules which left families at the mercy of the meddling “nanny state”, rather than the dignity of work.
I witnessed him demolish three left-wing academics who insisted Britain would never end unemployment.
Field pointed out there were at the time five million adults on work-related benefits.
“Yet we have imported five million migrants to do the jobs they could do,” he said.
In 1997, Tony Blair chose him as social security minister — famously asking him to “think the unthinkable” — only to sack him a year later for upsetting Chancellor Gordon Brown.
Born in North London to working class Tory parents, Field joined the Young Conservatives at 16.
The slightly built MP, who represented Birkenhead for 40 years before accepting a life peerage in 2020, was fearless in battle.
In the 1980s he risked physical violence during Militant Tendency’s ruthless bid to take over the Labour Party on Merseyside.
Field did not marry or have children and got his first TV only in 2005.
Unusually among modern politicians, he put principles above party, often in defiance of Labour policy.
A devout Christian, he also confronted the Church of England over its sale of treasures from deconsecrated churches and failure to support retired clergy.
He was regarded with suspicion in his own party after hailing Labour hate figure Margaret Thatcher as “the first Prime Minister since Gladstone to address the big moral questions”.
He had integrity, intelligence and deep commitment to the causes he believed in
Tony Blair
He was friends with Lady Thatcher, who frequently sought his views on welfare issues.
He was one of the last people she spoke to before resigning in 1990.
Field was among the few Labour MPs who campaigned for Brexit in 2016 on the grounds that immigration impoverished British workers.
Once an opponent of assisted dying, he wrote to the House of Lords from his hospice to say he was now in favour: “I changed my mind when an MP friend was dying of cancer and wanted to die early before the full horror effects set in, but was denied this opportunity.”
Field’s family yesterday paid tribute to “an extraordinary individual who spent his life fighting poverty, injustice and environmental destruction”.
Tony Blair said: “He had integrity, intelligence and deep commitment to the causes he believed in.
“He was never constrained by conventional wisdom but always pushing at the frontier of new ideas.
“Even when we disagreed, I had the utmost respect for him.”
Close friend and ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke of the admiration of politicians of all parties for this “loveable maverick”.
“He had integrity and commitment to the causes he believed in,” he said.
“I loved Frank.”