Frank Field: a Labour MP who dedicated his life to fighting poverty and epitomised the politics of character

In polarising political times, the death of Frank Field at the age of 81 seems to speak to the death of a certain kind of politician. Gracious, impeccably polite, unwaveringly principled and driven by an unmistakable moral conviction, few politicians today seem to fit the mould from which he was cast.

One theme emerges above all others in the tributes made to Field: that the man who served as MP for Birkenhead for 40 years offers an exemplary case of “good character”.

These words are not cheap clichés. The idea of good character was fundamental to Field’s vision of politics in a very specific way. He believed, “The major reason why Britain is rougher and more uncivilised than it was in the early post-war period has been the collapse of the politics of character.”

The Victorians, Field argued, had subscribed to a much more noble vision of the duties of citizens and the standards of public conduct. These were synthesised from liberal Protestantism, classical philosophy, English idealism, and an independently minded working-class culture which was forged through voluntary associations and strong local communities.

Precisely because of his conservative nostalgia for this Victorian moral universe, Field became a Labour MP. He battled against poverty all his life, devoting all his energies to improving the lives of the most vulnerable in society.

A vocal backbencher with the natural political intelligence to unite opposing MPs around specific social causes, Field’s legacy lies in a long list of legislation on child benefit, the minimum wage, rent allowances, climate change and modern slavery.

The ‘poverty trap’

As director of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), Field made a name for himself in 1970 by publishing a memorandum via a press release polemically titled The Poor Get Poorer under Labour. He later reflected that the document allowed CPAG to break its dependence on the Labour Party and become “a fully grown-up member of the lobby nexus”. The group went on to play an instrumental role in securing the implementation of child benefit in the late 1970s.

But CPAG also set the agenda for Field’s diagnosis of means testing and welfare dependency as twin ills afflicting the modern state. Means testing was not only a degrading experience but actually penalised honesty and self-interest. It discouraged recipients from picking up part-time work where they could and keeping them in what field described as the “poverty trap”.

Sceptical of the corrosive effect of dependence, Field preferred “stakeholder” schemes such as private pensions and Victorian-style friendly societies, in which working people pooled resources to help those in times of sickness and temporary unemployment.

The ultimate stakeholder scheme was the original vision of national insurance dreamed up by the Edwardian Liberal government. This gave individuals the opportunity to benefit from their own contributions and showed them the advantages of giving to help others in immediate need.

New Labour years

In 1997, Field was appointed by Tony Blair to serve as minister of welfare reform. He was instructed to “think the unthinkable”, and he did so. But Field struggled to compromise on his plan to crack down on benefit fraud and resigned in a cloud of controversy the following year. He became a vocal critic of New Labour’s tax credits for subsidising employers who pay poverty wages and, later, the system of universal credit after David Cameron ignored his recommendations as the Conservative government’s “poverty tsar”.

As these examples show, Field’s core principles took him outside the bounds of what was traditionally considered appropriate for a Labour MP to do, say, and support. He was famously friendly with Margaret Thatcher and counted her as a great influence on his life.

Even more controversially, Field cherished a lifelong friendship with Enoch Powell, having harboured a schoolboy admiration for the Tory MP’s scathing rebuke of the “magic circle” of Etonians who ran the Conservative party.

If anything, these friendships are a testament to his intellectual honesty and lack of political tribalism.

Historical grounding

Fellow Labour politicians found him “awkward”, a “nuisance” and even accused him of harbouring ambitions to cross the floor. But Field’s politics were remarkably coherent. He was inspired by 19th century Christian socialists, who offered a vision of a voluntary and cooperative society bound by a covenant of love and brotherly spirit, as opposed to an individualistic social contract.

One striking feature of Field’s defence of this Victorian spirit is how in tune it was with the academic scholarship about that period of history. Inspired by the fiery lectures of labour historian John Saville while a student at the University of Hull, Field never stopped reading deeply and widely. His defence of welfare reform was always buttressed with strong historical argument.

Field found a socialist version of the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” philosophy which he had first imbibed from his working-class Tory parents and as a Young Conservative in the early 1960s. Thatcher believed that the “Victorian values” of thrift and self-help meant that there was no such thing as society, outside of individuals and their families. Field believed a healthy individualism should include a moral responsibility to ensure that the poorest in society has access to a basic standard of life.

Field nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership in 2015 in order to “broaden the debate” and shock the party into confronting the deficit. But in his final years as MP for Birkenhead, Field became an intense critic of Corbyn-affiliated campaign group Momentum and what he referred to as its tolerance for “thuggery”.

His position at the time echoed many of the critiques he once made of the Militant tendency in the 1980s – of “bullies” shutting down the debate and kicking out all those who disagreed with them.

In his memoir, Field recounted a formative moment of his adolescence in which his abusive father came at him with a hammer. Field took the hammer out of his father’s hand and told him that if he tried it again, things might end differently. If there is was one constant in Field’s life, it was this contempt for arbritrary power and the injustices it breeds.

Field will be remembered as an exceptional example of a tireless and unselfish public servant. A man whose judgement was shaped by decent principles, serious research, and an intimate knowledge of and love for his constituency.

It should be remembered that these qualities were not just whims of his personal character, but part of a much deeper ideological commitment to public conduct and good citizenship. Field understood that the problems in our politics will not be fixed by simply hoping better politicians will come along. If we want to rejuvenate the ethics of public life, we could do worse than reflect on his life and work.

Oliver Gough does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.