Wilfred Fienburgh

Wilfred Fienburgh

Wilfred Fienburgh MBE (4 November 1919, Ilford, Essex – 3 February 1958, Mill Hill, London) was a British Labour Party politician.

Early life

Though born in Ilford, he was brought up in the Belle Vue area of Bradford, Yorkshire,[1] where he attended elementary and secondary schools. Between 1935 and 1939 he was variously a manual labourer, an office boy and unemployed.[2]

Military Service

In 1940, early in the Second World War, he enlisted in the British Army in the Rifle Brigade and was commissioned as an officer the same year.[2] He took part in the Normandy landings in 1944 and was twice wounded.[3] He was made Member of the British Empire (MBE) in 1945 and was demobilized as Major, serving on the General Staff, in 1946.[2] He continued to serve with the Territorial Army, and was a Major with the Intelligence Corps before he died.[1]

Personal life

In 1940 Fienburgh married Joan Valerie Hudson, daughter of Captain Thomas McDowell of Belfast. The couple had two sons and two daughters.[1]

Political career

At the 1945 general election he stood unsuccessfully in the Pembrokeshire constituency in Wales, losing by only 168 votes to the Liberal Party candidate Gwilym Lloyd George.

After demobilization he became full-time Assistant Secretary of the Civil Service Clerical Association, a trade union.[2] In 1947 he joined the Labour Party Research Department, and was for four years the secretary of the party's policy committee,[2] which involved him in drafting various articles of party policy during this period.

At the 1951 general election Fienburgh was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for the Labour seat of Islington North, in North London, although at the time of his death he was actually living in Hemel Hempstead. Percy Lucas, a friend and fellow MP, mentioned in his memoir Five Up that Fienburgh also had a burgeoning media career with both Granada Television and the Sunday Express.

Modern commentators have varying viewpoints on Fienburgh's character. He was described by Anthony Howard in The Times of November 7, 2000 as being "rather louche", and Denis Healey in his autobiography The Time of My Life (1989) asserts that Fienburgh's "good looks and big brown eyes often led him astray".[4] Edward Pearce, writing in The Guardian described him as a "delightful and amusing Labour politician".[5] Peter Hitchens in his book The Abolition of Britain described him as "one of the most talented men on the party's Left".[6] Fienburgh was allegedly involved in an altercation with Jennie Lee during the 1952 Labour Party conference, according to Lee's biographer Patricia Hollis.[7]

Fienburgh wrote several books including non-fiction works such as Steel Is Power - The Case for Nationalisation and 25 Momentous Years: A 25th Anniversary in the History of the Daily Herald. His best remembered book is a posthumously-published novel, No Love For Johnnie, a cynical portrayal of British politics in the late 1950s which was later adapted into a film starring Peter Finch as the title character. The novel seems to give vent to Fienburgh's deep-seated concerns about corruption in politics - he had previously claimed in 1955 that "the Labour party is the only party in Britain in which you can buy a seat", according to author Michael Rush in The Selection of Parliamentary Candidates (1969). One near-contemporary critic writing in the New Left Review of 1961 considered it a "bad novel" and that "Fienburgh seems to have had no conception of what idealism means".[8] Author Derek Jewell called it "a bitter study of political life" in 1967. Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The Observer in 2001 saw No Love for Johnnie as the archetype novel of a genre that he names "the Labour Party novel of disillusionment".[9] Paul Routledge in the New Statesman in 2000 described the novel as being highly prescient of the New Labour movement.[10]

Wilfred Fienburgh represented his constituency until his death in a car crash in 1958, aged 38. The car he was driving collided with a lamppost at Mill Hill, London. His funeral took place on 7 February at Golders Green Crematorium. He left £6,177 in his will, according to The Times report of 8 May 1958.

According to The Library Association Record (1961, p. 205) Fienburgh's widow Joan was invited to open a new Islington public library in July 1960 as an official mark of respect for her late husband. MP Robert Mellish collected a sum of £400 from fellow MPs to give to Joan Fienburgh.[11] Joan remarried in 1975, and died in 1991.[12]

At the resulting by-election, the seat was held for Labour by Gerry Reynolds, who himself died in office in 1969.

There is a block of flats on Carleton Road near Tufnell Park named after him.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Kelly's Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes, 1957. Kelly's. p. 788.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Who Was Who, 1951-1960. A and C Black. 1961. p. 373.
  3. ↑ Author description in book cover for No Love for Johnnie (1959).
  4. ↑ Denis Healey The Time of My Life, London: Michael Joseph, 1989, p.72
  5. ↑ Edward Pearce "Short, if not sweet", The Guardian, 21 February 2007
  6. ↑ Peter Hitchens The Abolition of Britain, London: Quartet, 2000 ed., p.299. A version of the chapter in which Fienburgh is cited was printed in the Mail on Sunday, 17 December 2000, and is online here.
  7. ↑ Patricia Hollis Jennie Lee: A Life, p.186
  8. ↑ Alan Lovell "Film Chronicle: No Love for Johnnie", New Left Review, I/8, March/April 1961, p.55
  9. ↑ Geoffrey Wheatcroft "Peter's friend", The Observer, 4 February 2001
  10. ↑ Paul Routledge's column, New Statesman, 2 October 2000
  11. ↑ Hansard, 11 July 1979 vol 970 cc476-614, 502
  12. ↑ England & Wales register of deaths 1837-2007

External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Moelwyn Hughes		 Member of Parliament for Islington North
1951 – 1958 		Succeeded by
Gerry Reynolds