By Rebecca Anderson
WE SHOULDN’T speak ill of the dead. That’s what Deputy Labour Leader Tom Watson must have been thinking when he eulogised Frank Field’s passing as a “serious loss” to the Labour Party. However, the sentiment that all life is sacred is not one Field shared, so in his memory let’s dispense with such diplomatic courtesies.
The former Labour MP for Birkenhead was hardly a household name. He was more right-wing than Jess Phillips but not as media-savvy. A bigger fan of Enoch Powell than Nigel Farage but not as much of a “character”. More callous about the rights of EU nationals living in the UK than Boris Johnson but with boring hair.
Field occasionally appeared in the national news, like when he argued that marriages should be annulled when one partner changed their gender. Or when he said that employers should be allowed to pay less than the minimum wage to “those whose disabilities are deemed so severe that they will never be capable of enough output to warrant payment of the minimum wage.” He even took a job with Cameron’s government as “Poverty Tsar”. Margaret Thatcher would have been proud of her good friend, Frank.
One might wonder how someone with such extreme views ended up as a Labour MP. A blast from his past, the former Labour MP for neighbouring Liverpool Walton constituency, Peter Kilfoyle, blogged that, “In the 1987 general election, he [Field] encouraged voters to opt for his friend – Tory MP for Wallasey, Linda Chalker – rather than support the Labour candidate, Lol Duffy.” Kilfoyle also remembers two other occasions when Field threw his toys out of the pram because local Labour members didn’t want him as their MP. As Kilfoyle points out, this over-developed sense of entitlement is at odds with Field’s condemnation of benefit recipients as “work-shy”. In 2003 Field proposed that “anti-social” constituents should be housed in metal containers under the M3.
During Tony Blair’s government, Field’s ministerial mission was to “think the unthinkable”, which he duly did, calling for major restrictions on access to out-of-work benefits and welfare.
His Birkenhead Constituency Labour Party unsurprisingly had doubts about their MP’s fitness to represent their party. After he sided with the Tories on a knife-edge Brexit vote in July, party members passed a vote of no confidence against him. As support grows for greater powers for members to choose their parliamentary candidates and the crunch point of September’s party conference neared, Field decided to jump before he was pushed. His claim that he is leaving over antisemitism might have sounded more genuine if he hadn’t also taken the opportunity to complain about his local party’s attempts to replace him. However, we should remember this is the first time in 76 years he had tried to say something in defence of the oppressed, so it must have been difficult to sound sincere.
As Birkenhead Constituency Labour Party breathe a sigh of relief we must remember that it’s not just the Labour Party who have gained from Frank’s departure. Politicians have real power to help or harm the people they represent. Field’s comments might sound like your racist uncle’s third cousin having a rant but it’s important to remember that he actually got to vote on laws affecting the vulnerable people he spoke of with such contempt. Frank Field’s legacy will not be the sycophantic words of his colleagues but the damage he did to the working class communities he was supposed to represent. n
