Terry Fields
| Terry Fields | |
|---|---|
|
Member of Parliament for Liverpool Broadgreen |
|
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In office 9 June 1983 – 9 April 1992 |
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| Preceded by | Constituency Created |
| Succeeded by | Jane Kennedy |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
8 March 1937 Bootle, Lancashire |
| Died | 28 June 2008 (aged 71) Netherton, Merseyside |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party |
Labour (until 1991) Independent (after 1991) |
| Profession | Firefighter |
Terence Fields (8 March 1937 – 28 June 2008), a member of the Militant group, was the Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Broadgreen for nine years. Earlier he had been on the Executive of the Fire Brigades Union.
Fields was born in Bootle, north of Liverpool, the son of a dockworker. Educated at the Major Street County Secondary School and at De La Salle Grammar School in Liverpool, Fields then spent two years on National Service in the Royal Army Medical Corps, an experience that he later claimed had radicalised him. Despite eye problems (the reason why he wore dark glasses), he became a fireman and later a Fire Brigades Union activist.
Fields joined the Labour Party in 1968. He was active in the Fire Brigades Union's national strike in 1977-78 and shortly afterwards he joined the Militant group, At the Labour Party's special conference in 1980 on the question of how to elect the Labour leader Fields spoke before Denis Healey and said: "We need coordinated action by the whole of our class to get the Tories out, and the democracy that is being pumped out in the capitalist press is their democracy, not ours. We will found a new democracy when we have created a socialist state in this country. ... To the weak-hearted, the traitors and cowards I say: 'Get out of our movement. There is no place for you. Cross the House of Commons.'"
Fields was selected as the Labour Party candidate for Liverpool Broadgreen for the general election in 1983. In line with the policy of the Militant group, he promised during his campaign that, if he was elected, he would be "a workers' MP on a worker's wage," a promise he kept by drawing only the equivalent of a fireman's wages and donating the balance of his MP's salary to trade union causes and, according to Doris Heffer, "to the party causes or, frankly, also to the coffers of Militant Tendency." Fields gained the friendship of other Labour MPs, including Doris Heffer's husband, Eric.
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