'Labour's Frank Field was independent and awkward but a champion of the people'
He could be a right old nuisance, but he was a champion of the people. In 50 years of public life – as anti-poverty campaigner, Labour MP and minister, prolific author and prominent Christian – Frank Field often rubbed people up the wrong way.
That was the point of him. As his old colleague Lord David Blunkett said yesterday: “He was the grit in the oyster.” Field, fearless and awkward, died aged 81 on St George’s Day in a London nursing home after a long cancer battle.
Their statement added: “His decency and faith in people’s self-interested altruism made a unique contribution to British politics. Frank will be mourned by admirers across the political divide. “Above all, he will be deeply missed by those lucky enough to have enjoyed his laughter and friendship.”
Tony Blair made Lord Field a minister with the job of “thinking the unthinkable” about welfare reform, and sacked him when he did just that. Sir Tony led the tributes saying: “Frank had integrity, intelligence and a deep commitment to causes he believed in. He was an independent thinker, never constrained by conventional wisdom, but always pushing at the frontier of new ideas.”
Labour leader Keir Starmer said Lord Field “dedicated his life to being a voice for the vulnerable and marginalised”. He called him “principled, courageous, and independent-minded” and said his “honour and integrity were well known and admired”.
Softly spoken, gracious and polite, he had the manner and manners of a monk – but his mildness must not be confused with meekness. Field was passionate about tackling poverty and cared deeply about his Birkenhead constituency. He fought crusades against deprivation, the scourge of child hunger and what he called the “rampant injustice” suffered by workers in the gig economy.
Field’s ideas were rooted in a self-help philosophy learned from his working class parents in west London – both Conservatives – who believed in “pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps”. Their outlook, he later wrote, gave him “a very good feel for where the Labour vote really is”. He looked for it in the strangest places, counting Margaret Thatcher as a friend and “a hero”.
He said: “She was Big Mama. I didn’t really understand the world. I would explain what my problem was and Big Mama would deal with it for me.” He even advised her on her resignation in 1990, when he was smuggled out of a secret meeting in Downing Street.
Unfashionably for a Labour politician, and inspired by his faith, Field took a socially conservative line on many issues, including abortion, the family, immigration, anti-social behaviour and reform of the benefits system. However he supported gay rights, and voted for same-sex marriage. Frank Ernest Field was born on July 16 1942, in Edmonton, North London, the middle of three sons.
His father was a labourer in a Battersea works making carbon and ceramic products, and his mother a primary school welfare worker. He went to the local St Clement Danes Grammar School and read economics at the University of Hull.
Initially, Field he was a member of the Tory Party, but quit in 1960 over apartheid in South Africa and joined Labour, becoming a councillor in Hounslow, and later, director of the Child Poverty Action Group. The charity called him a “champion for low-income families”, who paved the way for the minimum wage, free school meals and rent allowances.
Lord Field was elected MP for Birkenhead in 1979. In the Commons, he met Enoch Powell, for whom he had an admiration – astonishing even for a maverick like him. Field said Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech a decade earlier was “almost his only major political error”. They discussed Christian theology together. In Parliament, Field pursued a zig-zag path of promotion, demotion, appointment and disappointment under Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock in various roles.
When Daily Mirror owner Robert Maxwell died in 1991 and it emerged he had stolen £480million from the Mirror pension fund, Field helped victims to secure lifeline. And in 2016 when BHS collapsed with a pension fund deficit of £510m, Field chaired the inquiry.
He called owner Sir Philip Green “worse than Robert Maxwell” and accused him of “plundering BHS”. Green threatened to sue him, calling the inquiry “biased and unfair”. After Labour’s 1997 landslide, Tony Blair made him Minister for Welfare Reform “to think the unthinkable”. He lasted little more than a year, proposing radical changes such as the replacement of non-contributory benefits with insurance policies.
Blair later confessed his minister’s thoughts were “not so much unthinkable as unfathomable”. Returning to the backbenches, Field was a thorn in New Labour’s side, opposing reforms like the working families tax credit. He also backed unsuccessful calls for a leadership ballot to unseat PM Gordon Brown.
On taking power in 2010, David Cameron invited Field to head an independent review into poverty. He fared no better than with Blair, complaining that his report was ignored. Instead, he turned his energies to chairing the Work and Pension Select Committee.
A long-time Brexiteer, opposed to unfettered migration from the EU, he voted with the Tory government in July 2018 over Europe and was punished by his local party with a vote of no confidence. A month later, he resigned the Labour whip, citing a “culture of intolerance, nastiness and intimidation” and anti-semitism (though he had nominated Jeremy Corbyn for leader). Some said Field jumped before he was pushed, but the last push came from voters in 2019 when Field stood for the Birkenhead Social Justice Party, and lost to Labour.
It ended his political career, though he was showered with honours. Awarded a life peerage, he became Baron Field of Birkenhead. He was made a Companion of Honour, the most elite order in public life and received the freedom of Wirral in 2022.
By then he was terminally ill and had spent time in a hospice, where he changed his views on assisted dying. He asked fellow a peer to read out a statement supporting reform. Field had been suffering prostate cancer for almost a decade. He died unmarried and without children.
His fatal flaw, some may say, was he was too independent to fit the mould of partisan British politics. Though that is the only way to get things done.