Gerald Kaufman

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“Shadow Foreign Minister” Kaufman (left) in 1988 with Taha Yassin Ramadan in Iraq

Sir Gerald Bernard Kaufman (born June 21, 1930 in Leeds - † February 26, 2017 ) was a British politician ( Labor Party ).

Career

Kaufman was the youngest child of Polish immigrants. He received a scholarship to Leeds Grammar School. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at Queen's College at the University of Oxford for which he was also awarded a scholarship. In the early 1960s he worked as a screenwriter for British television, particularly as a sketch writer for the series That Was the Week That Was . Kaufman took an interest in politics at university and tried to find a constituency after graduation. In 1955 he stood in Bromley against the future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and lost. In the next election he ran unsuccessfully in the constituency of Gillingham . He began working as a writer for the Daily Mail and, from 1964, for a short time for the New Statesman . Under Harold Wilson he was responsible for the press in the Labor Party. He wrote various non-fiction books on politics and film. Since 1970 he sat for the Labor Party as a member of parliament, first for the constituency of Manchester Ardwick and then for the constituency of Manchester Gorton in the lower house of the British Parliament . Gerald Kaufman is best known abroad as a Jewish critic of Israel's occupation policy .

Kaufman served from 1974 to 1979 as State Secretary in various Labor cabinets. In the Thatcher era after 1979 he was the party's spokesman for environmental issues, then "shadow interior minister" and from 1987 to 1992 "shadow foreign minister" of the Labor opposition. From 1992 to 2005 he was the chairman of the Parliament's Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. He was known as a film buff and had a particular fondness for musicals. He had been a member of Poale Zion , the organization of socialist Zionists in Great Britain , from his youth .

2004 Kaufman was beaten to the Knight Bachelor .

Since the 2015 general election , Sir Gerald has been considered the MP with the longest uninterrupted term in office, earning the title of Father of the House . After the election there were three other MPs in addition to Sir Gerald who had sat in the House of Commons since 1970, but they only took their oath of office after him.

Publications

  • How to be a Minister , Faber & Faber, 2nd edition, 1997, ISBN 978-0571190805 .
  • Meet Me in St. Louis , BFI Publishing, 1994, ISBN 978-0851705019
  • Inside the Promised Land: Personal View of Today's Israel , Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1986, ISBN 978-0704505360 .
  • My Life in the Silver Screen , Faber & Faber, 1985, ISBN 978-0571134939
  • Renewal: Labor's Britain in the 1980’s , Penguin Books, 1983, ISBN 978-0140523515 .
  • Outrage: the Abuse of Diplomatic Immunity / Chuck Ashman and Pamela Trescott; with an Introduction by Gerald Kaufman , MW Books, 1986.

as editor:

  • The Left , Anthony Blond, 1966.

Web links

Commons : Gerald Kaufman  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Labor MP Gerald Kaufman dies at 86. In: BBC News . February 27, 2017, accessed March 2, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b c Obituary: Gerald Kaufman. In: BBC News . February 27, 2017, accessed March 2, 2017.
  3. ↑ Stephen Bates: Sir Gerald Kaufman obituary. In: The Guardian . February 27, 2017, accessed March 2, 2017.
  4. ^ Sir Gerald Kaufman is the new Father of the House . UK Parliament website, 13 May 2015, accessed 2 March 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Kaufman, Gerald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kaufman, Gerald Bernard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Labor Party politician, Member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Leeds , Yorkshire and the Humber , England , United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 2017