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

In polarising political instances, the dying of Frank Subject on the age of 81 appears to talk to the dying of a sure type of politician. Gracious, impeccably well mannered, unwaveringly principled and pushed by an unmistakable ethical conviction, few politicians at present appear to suit the mould from which he was solid.

One theme emerges above all others within the tributes made to Subject: that the person who served as MP for Birkenhead for 40 years presents an exemplary case of “good character”.

These phrases should not low-cost clichés. The thought of excellent character was basic to Subject’s imaginative and prescient of politics in a really particular method. He believed, “The main motive why Britain is rougher and extra uncivilised than it was within the early post-war interval has been the collapse of the politics of character.”

The Victorians, Subject argued, had subscribed to a way more noble imaginative and prescient of the duties of residents and the requirements of public conduct. These have been synthesised from liberal Protestantism, classical philosophy, English idealism, and an independently minded working-class tradition which was solid via voluntary associations and robust native communities.

Exactly due to his conservative nostalgia for this Victorian ethical universe, Subject grew to become a Labour MP. He battled towards poverty all his life, devoting all his energies to bettering the lives of essentially the most weak in society.

A vocal backbencher with the pure political intelligence to unite opposing MPs round particular social causes, Subject’s legacy lies in an extended record of laws on baby profit, the minimal wage, lease allowances, local weather change and fashionable slavery.

The ‘poverty lure’

As director of the Baby Poverty Motion Group (CPAG), Subject made a reputation for himself in 1970 by publishing a memorandum by way of a press launch polemically titled The Poor Get Poorer underneath Labour. He later mirrored that the doc allowed CPAG to interrupt its dependence on the Labour Occasion and grow to be “a totally grown-up member of the foyer nexus”. The group went on to play an instrumental position in securing the implementation of kid profit within the late Nineteen Seventies.

However CPAG additionally set the agenda for Subject’s analysis of means testing and welfare dependency as twin ills afflicting the trendy state. Means testing was not solely a degrading expertise however really penalised honesty and self-interest. It discouraged recipients from choosing up part-time work the place they might and maintaining them in what area described because the “poverty lure”.

Sceptical of the corrosive impact of dependence, Subject most popular “stakeholder” schemes comparable to personal pensions and Victorian-style pleasant societies, by which working folks pooled assets to assist these in instances of illness and momentary unemployment.

The last word stakeholder scheme was the unique imaginative and prescient of nationwide insurance coverage dreamed up by the Edwardian Liberal authorities. This gave people the chance to profit from their very own contributions and confirmed them the benefits of giving to assist others in instant want.

New Labour years

In 1997, Subject was appointed by Tony Blair to function minister of welfare reform. He was instructed to “suppose the unthinkable”, and he did so. However Subject struggled to compromise on his plan to crack down on profit fraud and resigned in a cloud of controversy the next 12 months. He grew to become a vocal critic of New Labour’s tax credit for subsidising employers who pay poverty wages and, later, the system of common credit score after David Cameron ignored his suggestions because the Conservative authorities’s “poverty tsar”.

As these examples present, Subject’s core ideas took him outdoors the bounds of what was historically thought-about applicable for a Labour MP to do, say, and assist. He was famously pleasant with Margaret Thatcher and counted her as an important affect on his life.

Much more controversially, Subject 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 celebration.

If something, these friendships are a testomony to his mental honesty and lack of political tribalism.

Historic grounding

Fellow Labour politicians discovered him “awkward”, a “nuisance” and even accused him of harbouring ambitions to cross the ground. However Subject’s politics have been remarkably coherent. He was impressed by nineteenth century Christian socialists, who provided a imaginative and prescient of a voluntary and cooperative society sure by a covenant of affection and brotherly spirit, versus an individualistic social contract.

One putting characteristic of Subject’s defence of this Victorian spirit is how in tune it was with the tutorial scholarship about that interval of historical past. Impressed by the fiery lectures of labour historian John Saville whereas a scholar on the College of Hull, Subject by no means stopped studying deeply and broadly. His defence of welfare reform was at all times buttressed with sturdy historic argument.

Subject discovered a socialist model of the “pull your self up by your bootstraps” philosophy which he had first imbibed from his working-class Tory dad and mom and as a Younger Conservative within the early Sixties. Thatcher believed that the “Victorian values” of thrift and self-help meant that there was no such factor as society, outdoors of people and their households. Subject believed a wholesome individualism ought to embody an ethical duty to make sure that the poorest in society has entry to a primary commonplace of life.

Subject nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour management in 2015 in an effort to “broaden the controversy” and shock the celebration into confronting the deficit. However in his remaining years as MP for Birkenhead, Subject grew to become an intense critic of Corbyn-affiliated marketing campaign group Momentum and what he known as its tolerance for “thuggery”.

His place on the time echoed most of the critiques he as soon as made from the Militant tendency within the Nineteen Eighties – of “bullies” shutting down the controversy and kicking out all those that disagreed with them.

In his memoir, Subject recounted a formative second of his adolescence by which his abusive father got here at him with a hammer. Subject took the hammer out of his father’s hand and advised him that if he tried it once more, issues would possibly finish in another way. If there’s was one fixed in Subject’s life, it was this contempt for arbritrary energy and the injustices it breeds.

Subject shall be remembered as an distinctive instance of a tireless and unselfish public servant. A person whose judgement was formed by first rate ideas, critical analysis, and an intimate data of and love for his constituency.

It ought to be remembered that these qualities weren’t simply whims of his private character, however a part of a a lot deeper ideological dedication to public conduct and good citizenship. Subject understood that the issues in our politics won’t be mounted by merely hoping higher politicians will come alongside. If we need to rejuvenate the ethics of public life, we might do worse than replicate on his life and work.