Terry Fields: 1937 – 2008

Posted by Richie Venton on July 10, 2008. Filed under Obituaries. Posted with the tags:Obituaries
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The world is a poorer place with the recent death of Terry Fields, former firefighters’ leader and socialist MP for Liverpool Broadgreen from 1983-1992.

Terry died of lung cancer, aged 71, in his family home in Netherton, Bootle, Merseyside.

In an age when most politicians act like pigs with their snouts in a trough of obscenely inflated salaries, home decoration allowances and straightforward corruption, Terry was outstandingly different. He was a profoundly honest man, a principled man, a lovely man that I was proud to know as a close friend, comrade and ferocious class fighter.

Terry joined the fire brigade when he was 20. He became heavily involved in his trade union, the FBU, and was elected to its national executive committee. Older, retired fire-fighters in Scotland will recall his links with the best lefts in Strathclyde FBU in the 1970s, when he helped lead successful unofficial strike action.

I met him in the 1977-8 FBU national strike, where he played an outstanding role. As an object lessons to socialists seeking to recruit workers to their ranks today, Terry denounced ‘the ultra-left’ from the platform when we got him to address a 400-strong support rally for the strike called by Liverpool Labour Party Young Socialists! But after working alongside him and patiently discussing with him over the next couple of months, he joined Militant, the socialist group which 20 years later went on to be one of the main founders of the Scottish Socialist Party.

One of my fondest political memories is the long, intense general election campaign of 1983, where as his campaign organiser I spent most days with him, witnessing his marvellous qualities as a working class socialist. He was deadly serious about his principles, but had a great and ready sense of humour. Pensioners were charmed by him on the streets. Workers flocked to hear him address factory gate meetings, often still in their work overalls. Street corner meetings attracted crowds of parents and children to hear his hard-hitting socialist message – and he always had time to talk with them afterwards, never aloof or too self-important.

Pat Phoenix (Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street) and her partner Tony Booth (father of Cherie Booth/Blair) joined Arthur Scargill and a host of local community and trade union speakers at election rallies, endorsing Terry.
The undiluted socialism espoused by Terry won a 3,800 majority in what was previously a Tory marginal seat – in contrast to the huge swing to the Tories and Labour’s national humiliation under the compromiser Kinnock.

Terry chose “Eye of a Tiger” as our campaign theme tune; after a month of listening to it all day we both developed a love-hate relationship with the song. But what a gentle big tiger Terry was. After he was elected to parliament the Tories expressed feign alarm at this working class man daring to set foot in parliament with a pure Scouse accent, wearing a leather jacket and photosynthetic dark glasses. But it was his uncompromising socialist message, his undiluted hatred of all that the Tories and their Labour echoes represented, that really frightened them.

Terry had no time for parliament as such; he called it the ‘mad house’, entered it as such in his diary, not as an affectation, but as a genuine feeling. He mocked parliament’s rituals – such as Black Rod in his black stockings who opens the parliament – to the laughter of many a crowd in public meetings. He refused to hob-nob with the enemy in the MPs’ bars and tearooms, which he saw as corrupting gentlemen’s clubs. He much preferred his Sunday night visits to St Bennet’s club in Netherton, with his wife Maureen, where he was known to croon on the mic! The humour of the man came out in singing songs like ‘I’m too sexy for my shirt’!

Terry spurned the glitter and fame – not to mention the incomes on the side – that too many politicians, including too many on the left, have been seduced, corrupted and destroyed by. He carried out our election pledge of 1983 – ‘a workers’ MP on a workers’ wage’ – by living on a fire-fighter’s wage, donating the surplus MP’s salary to community campaigns, strikers and socialist struggle. A woman teacher said to Terry during the election campaign, “Just promise me one thing – you won’t change”. He remained true to his reply to her: “There’s no way I’ll change. I’ve got no pretensions to enhance my own lifestyle on the backs of working people, when you see the conditions and the support they’ve given me.”

He was at the centre of the mass movement around the socialist Liverpool council of 1983-7 which defeated Thatcher’s government and won massive, lasting reforms on housing, community facilities and jobs for the working class.

Terry was at the heart of the anti-poll tax movement. We brought 1,000 people on coaches from Merseyside when he addressed the anti-poll tax march in Glasgow in 1989. And Terry never made a big fuss about the self-sacrifice involved. He went to jail in 1991, whilst still an MP, for refusing to pay his poll tax. I recall how pale he looked when I visited him in Walton jail, but how cheerful, how eager to hear we were organising a long march from his constituency to a rally addressed by Arthur Scargill and others outside the prison walls.

Such courage and conviction inspired working class people but mortified Labour leader Neil Kinnock, who expelled him from Labour later in 1991.

Although Terry withdrew from formal politics in more recent years, he volunteered at the local advice centre, took up the demands and rights of fellow-allotment owners, and never dropped his commitment to workers’ rights – joining the Liverpool dockers’ demos and expressing enthusiasm for what the SSP was doing.

Terry was a devoted family man, who sacrificed precious time with Maureen and their three children Paula, Michael and Stephen, in order to stand up for working class people in ‘the mad house’ in Westminster, but above all else outside it.

Those of us privileged to know him sadly miss him, and offer our love and solidarity to Maureen, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchild. And the present generation of socialists should gain confidence in the future, with Terry’s memory proving that not all politicians are rotten, but that honesty, humility and a determination to achieve socialism can all live in the same person and enrich our movement.