Politics, Poverty and Belief: A Political Memoir

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I had to have at least 45 years paying national insurance, where the MODERN brood only pay 30yrs contributions (how does that redress national pension pots)?

He wonders if I have any faith, and I explain that any tiny sentimental attachment I had for the Church of England disappeared with the synod’s cruel muddle on same-sex relationships. It was jolly nice being in the Lords, but given my previous oath to Queen Elizabeth included her successor, I couldn’t understand it.” He was appointed Minister for Welfare Reform by Tony Blair, and Chairman of the Work and Pensions Select Committee under John Major. With the Rowntree Trust, Field set up the Low Pay Unit (LPU). But their encounters – goodness knows what his local constituents would have made of them – had a more personal impact, as well. “What I admired was her total command of the machine,” he says.

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He was born in Edmonton in 1942, son of working-class Tories. At the age of 15, his father, a violent bully, threatened him with a hammer. Frank took it away from him and said that if he tried that again, “I would use the hammer on him.” Field, who never married or had children and, while an MP, remained largely silent on his religious views for fear of sounding eccentric, believes strongly in the Christian doctrine of a Day of Judgment. She was wrong because she didn’t balance it. There was too much of the Fallen and not enough of the Redeemed. But what she said [about self-reliance] spoke to the nation during much of that period.”

Frank Field during a lecture at Southwark College, London, following the cabinet leak row of 1976. Photograph: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy The Right says poverty is a personal failure, yet it’s also about societal injustice; the Left says the problem is economic, but it is also shaped by culture. Field concludes that we’ve undergone a rupture between the “tough love” of the Victorian era and the permissiveness of today, with the result that self-discipline is no longer transmitted between generations and many young Britons don’t know how to be good citizens. The job of the state, as per the Christian idealist tradition, must be to teach them, not for the sake of making them dependent on the government, but to empower them to be free from hunger and dependency. The book – and his politics – is full of the will to keep pursuing a New Jerusalem in the knowledge of human failure. When did that conviction form? Although I’m viewed as a Christian in politics, I think Christianity has done a real disservice in trying to be an effective politician,” he explains. For the past half-century Frank Field has been an outstanding parliamentarian, social reformer and champion of the disadvantaged. He joined the Labour Party at the age of 16 and was expelled from it at the age of 78.' -Brian & Rachel GriffithsFrank Field when he was the director of the Child Poverty Action Group, 1973. Photograph: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us

I’ve always thought the House of Lords should be manned by good people,” he says with a smile in his voice. “I’m going to get there soon with the help of Daniel [his assistant who sits with him during our interview]. I’ve been out now in a wheelchair. It’s too cold this week. But when it warms up we will make it over there.” When he came up against the Militant tendency in Birkenhead, he recognised the bullying and knew to stand up to it. It was the same with Momentum, which took over the constituency party and tried to have him deselected after Corbyn became leader in 2015. It was eventually because of his belief that “Jeremy Corbyn was cultivating a national tolerance of the thuggery that we were experiencing locally from Momentum activists”, that he resigned the whip.It sounds like I’ve had a stroke, which I may well have done,” he says. “But it’s mainly the cancer operating around my body that has made this happen. It’s not particularly frustrating. Favouring books about economic theory and political history, each extra day remains a boon. Diagnosed with prostate cancer ten years ago, Baron Field of Birkenhead (he chooses not to use his title) is still going strong despite being transferred to a hospice two years ago. In this touching but also profound memoir, Field explains two key factors in his upbringing – the poverty of his own childhood and the deep and lasting effect of his Christian socialism, as exemplified in the writings of F. D. Maurice and William Temple. From the very word go, I’ve been conscious that we’ve been fallen, but from my mother I got this sense of the possibility of redemption,” he says. “One of the reasons why there has been tension between me and the Labour party is that in the 1970s and 80s, they developed a very highfalutin view of human nature. And a growing part of our electorate ceased to believe in the Labour cause because they knew damn well how people behaved. They could see it in people in their own street.” It was his first time in Parliament in two years and he was cheered loudly, but found the experience a bit pointless.