‘Remembering Frank Field’

Like few others, Frank Field would make you think. Perhaps it was because he did so much thinking himself that, by osmosis, those around him adopted that same passion for questioning and challenging. 

There was no orthodoxy too great for Frank to challenge. 

A Labour MP who was friends with Margaret Thatcher. 

A Brexit supporter who was passionate about climate change and the impact it was having on the world’s poorest. 

A Minister sacked for thinking unthinkable thoughts on welfare who set up a project to feed Britain’s poorest. 

He was nobody’s man but his own. It would be an error to mistake that independence of thought for anything other than him seeking the answers to society’s problems and having no compunction in disagreeing with anyone he had to in this pursuit. 

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Frank mentored me. We’d have dinners that were full of good-natured arguments and big questions. He would always adopt a position he knew would spark a passionate debate. Why waste a good dinner on pointlessly agreeing? I miss those dinners, even more so since being elected. I know his guidance would bring me comfort – and I know he’d follow that up with a provocation to ensure it wasn’t too comfortable. 

I’d dearly love to speak to him about the dangers of populism. Frank cared deeply about community, and he would be horrified by the destructive intent of those stoking division on the issues he cared about. 

Mostly, I’d simply like to have a conversation about the world. Many people rightly saw Frank as a deeply serious mind committed to deeply serious endeavours, but that isn’t the whole Frank. 

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He had a joyous sense of humour with an uncontrollable laugh when he got going. He was wise but also had a child-like fascination with the world. I remember him trying hummus, being mesmerised by its taste and practicing pronouncing it at points throughout the evening. Even in later years, when we spoke about his illness, he would talk about the cancer reaching his jaw and ‘having a jolly old time in there’. That was Frank. 

He once said to me that any days he enjoyed beyond three score years and ten would be a blessing. Well, those extra days were a blessing to us as much as to him. 

In Jewish culture we say, ‘may their memory be a blessing’. His memory is. He helped me think. I miss him dearly.

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