Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford

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"Lord Longford" redirects here. For other people known as Lord Longford, see Earl of Longford.

Anthony Greenwood
Succeeded byFrederick Lee
First Lord of the Admiralty
In office
24 May 1951 – 13 October 1951
MonarchGeorge VI
Prime MinisterClement Attlee
Preceded byThe Viscount Hall
Succeeded byJames Thomas
Minister of Civil Aviation
In office
31 May 1948 – 1 June 1951
Monarch
Lord Temporal
as a hereditary peer
16 October 1945 – 11 November 1999
Preceded byPeerage created [1]
Succeeded bySeat abolished
as a life peer
17 November 1999 – 3 August 2001
Personal details
Born
Francis Aungier Pakenham

(1905-12-05)5 December 1905
London, England
Died3 August 2001(2001-08-03) (aged 95)
London, England
Political partyLabour
Spouse
Elizabeth Harman
​
(m. 1931)​
Children8, including Antonia, Thomas, Judith, Rachel, and Michael
Parent(s)Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford
Lady Mary Child-Villiers
Alma materNew College, Oxford

Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford,

Earls of Longford), he was one of the few aristocratic hereditary peers
ever to serve in a senior capacity within a Labour government.

Longford was famed for championing social outcasts and unpopular causes.

Myra Hindley attracted much media and public controversy. For this work, the Longford Prize is named after him. It is awarded annually during the Longford Lecture and recognises achievement in the field of penal reform.[3]

As a devout Christian determined to translate faith into action, he was known for his bombastic style and his eccentricity.[4] Although a shrewd and influential politician, he was also widely unpopular among Labour leaders, particularly for his lack of ministerial ability, and was moved from cabinet post to cabinet post, never serving more than two years at any one ministry. Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson opined that Longford had the mental capacity of a 12-year-old.[5]

In 1972, he was made a

Knight Companion of the Garter. In the same year, he was appointed to head the group charged with investigating the effects of pornography on society which published the controversial Pornography Report (the Longford Report).[6][7] He became known as a campaigner against pornography and held the view that it was degrading to both its users and to those who worked in the trade, especially women.[8] Longford was also an outspoken critic of the British press, and once said it was "trembling on the brink of obscenity".[9]

Longford was instrumental in

gay rights legislation, including the equalisation of the age of consent, and also supported the passage of Section 28.[11][12]

Background and education

Born in London to an

don at Christ Church
.

Political career

Pakenham at his wedding in 1931

After a disastrous spell in stockbroking with

reactionary politics, but in 1946 she joined the same church.[15] During the war, Pakenham was hired as an assistant for William Beveridge, and was involved in the production of the Beveridge Report and the 1944 book Full Employment in a Free Society.[13]

Pakenham then embarked on a political career. In

Privy Council in June of that year. He continued in this post until May 1951. From May until the fall of the administration in October 1951, he was First Lord of the Admiralty
.

After Dark
in 1988

In 1961, Pakenham inherited from his brother the earldom of Longford in the Peerage of Ireland and from then onward was generally known to the public as Lord Longford. When Labour returned to power in October 1964 under Harold Wilson, Longford was appointed Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords,[18] despite the fact that Wilson had little respect for him.[5] In December 1965 he became Secretary of State for the Colonies, continuing as Leader of the House of Lords. After only four months at the Colonial Office, he was removed from the post for failing to master his brief,[citation needed] and again became Lord Privy Seal in April 1966. Wilson often talked about sacking Longford from his government, which is believed by some to have led to Longford's resignation as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords in January 1968 – though the actual occasion of his resignation was the failure of Education Secretary Patrick Gordon Walker to agree to the raising of the school-leaving age.[5][19] In 1972 he was created a Knight Companion of the Garter.[20]

Penal reform

Longford began visiting prisoners in the 1930s when he was a city councillor in Oxford, and continued to do so every week, all around the country, until shortly before his death in 2001. Among the thousands he befriended and helped were a small number of individuals who had committed the most notorious crimes, including child murderer

Myra Hindley
.

In 1956, he set up New Bridge Foundation, an organisation that aimed to help prisoners stay in touch with society and integrate them back into it.[21][22]

New Bridge set up

parole system.[25]

Longford was a leading figure in the Nationwide Festival of Light of 1971, protesting against the commercial exploitation of sex and violence, and advocating the teaching of Christ as the key to recovering moral stability in the nation. His anti-pornography campaigning made him the subject of derision and he was labelled by the press as Lord Porn when he and former prison doctor Christine Temple-Saville set out on a wide-ranging tour of sex industry establishments in the early 1970s to compile a self-funded report.[13] The press made much of his visits to strip clubs in Copenhagen.

AIDS and had been cut off by his family. Longford was the only person to visit the dying man, a gesture repeated in countless episodes that never made headlines, but which brought succour and relief.[4]

Myra Hindley

He gained a reputation for eccentricity, becoming known for his efforts to rehabilitate offenders and in particular campaigning for the parole and release from prison of the

Moors Murders.[13]

Longford's support for Hindley led to the soubriquet Lord Wrongford from the tabloid press, which largely opposed Hindley being released from prison. It also coincided with Longford's contact with Hindley becoming public knowledge in 1972,[26] when "Lord Porn" was in the midst of the debacle of a much-lampooned anti-pornography crusade against "indecency", giving rise to more allegations of hypocrisy than had already resulted from his tours of sex clubs.

In 1977, 11 years after Hindley was convicted of two murders and being an accessory to a third murder, Longford appeared on television and spoke openly of his belief that Hindley should now be considered for parole as she had shown clear signs of progress in prison and now served long enough for the

Brass Tacks, which featured arguments for and against Hindley being considered for parole. Ann West, the mother of Lesley Ann Downey, spoke out against the suggestion of Hindley ever being paroled, and openly told viewers that she would kill Hindley if she ever was released.[27]

In 1985, he condemned the Parole Board's decision not to consider Hindley's release for another five years as "barbaric". His campaign for Hindley continued even after she admitted to two more murders in 1986, which further strengthened media and public suspicion that Hindley’s reported rehabilitation and remorse were nothing more than a ploy to boost her chances of gaining parole. There was also widespread doubt regarding Hindley’s claims that she had only taken part in the killings due to being bullied and blackmailed by Brady.

In 1990,

High Court judges that she would have to serve a minimum of 25 and then 30 years before being considered for parole. Hindley was not informed of the decision until December 1994, following a High Court ruling that all life sentence prisoners had to be informed of their minimum sentences, and Longford later expressed his "disgust" at this ruling, comparing her imprisonment to that of Jews in Nazi Germany.[28] By this time Hindley, who had initially thought that having "friends in high places" could only help her cause, had cut off all contact and communication with him, now considering him a liability whose "campaigning" was little more than publicity-seeking on his own behalf. She did regain contact with him again following this, however.[29]

The next three Home Secretaries all agreed with Waddington's ruling. Hindley appealed against her whole life tariff in the High Court in December 1997, November 1998 and March 2000, but each appeal was rejected. Longford maintained that she was a reformed character who was no longer a threat to society, and had qualified for parole. He regularly commented, along with several other Hindley supporters, that she was a "political prisoner" who was being kept in prison for votes, to serve the interests of a succession of Home Secretaries and their respective governments. Home Office files would later reveal that in 1975 Longford had also lobbied various government ministers, including the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, on Brady's behalf, as well. This resulted in Brady obtaining special treatment while remaining in the prison hospital, rather than being returned to the segregation unit. This gave him access to adolescent "youth custody" inmates; he was only removed from this privileged situation in 1982, after he was accused by several underage inmates of sexual assault. Unlike Hindley, Brady never wanted to be paroled from his life sentence, and remained in custody for more than 50 years until his death in May 2017 at the age of 79.[30]

In March 1996, Longford backed up Hindley's claim in an

Oxford University magazine that she was still in prison so that the Conservative government – trailing in the opinion polls since the autumn of 1992 – would win more votes. This claim was met with anger by the mothers of two of the Moors Murders victims, including Ann West, who remained at the centre of the campaign to ensure that Hindley was never released, and once again vowed to kill Hindley if she was set free.[31] Longford regularly condemned the media - especially The Sun
newspaper - for its "exploitation" of Ann West, who frequently opposed any suggestion of Hindley being paroled, often threatening to kill her if she was ever set free.

In 1986, Longford reportedly told Ann West that unless she forgave Hindley and Brady, she would not go to heaven when she died. He also commented that he was "tremendously sorry for her, but letting her decide Myra's fate would be ludicrous".[32]

Hindley died in November 2002, having never been paroled.[33]

The story of Longford's campaign to free Hindley was told in the

BAFTA for his role) and Hindley was played by Samantha Morton
.

Decriminalisation of homosexuality

In 1956, Longford launched the first Parliamentary debate in support of the

homosexual acts between men over the age of 21. He had been a staunch public supporter of Lord Montagu and his lover Peter Wildeblood after the two were jailed for breaking anti-gay laws in the early 1950s, and visited them regularly in prison.[34]

In the 1960s, while continuing to support the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales, he nonetheless asserted that homosexuality was "nauseating" and that, regardless of any change in the law, it was "utterly wrongful".[35] He was of the belief that homosexuality was something that could be "taught".[36]

In the mid-1980s, Longford was a vocal supporter of the introduction of Section 28 by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government and, during the Parliamentary debates, he stated his opinion that homosexuals are "handicapped people".[37] Section 28 became law in 1988, but Longford continued to support it and fought against its repeal when the new Labour government came to power in 1997. Section 28 was eventually repealed in 2003, two years after his death.

Longford's highly publicised condemnation of homosexuality in the late 1980s made him a target of comedian

satirised him in his stage shows and television appearances.[38]

Longford also opposed any attempts to lower the age of consent for homosexual acts below 21; in 1977 and in 1994, he spoke against lowering it to 18, claiming that "the years of 18 and 19 are [...] the years when the destiny of young men may be decided for life" and that people of that age could have too easily been seduced into a homosexual lifestyle; in the early years of Tony Blair's government, he criticized plans to equalise the age of consent for gay men (at that time 18) with that of heterosexual men (16), remarking in a 1998 House of Lords debate that:

...if someone seduced my daughter, it would be damaging and horrifying but not fatal. She would recover, marry and have lots of children... On the other hand, if some elderly, or not so elderly, schoolmaster seduced one of my sons and taught him to be a homosexual, he would ruin him for life. That is the fundamental distinction.[39]

He was ultimately unsuccessful on those counts, as the age of consent for gay men ended up being lowered to 18 in 1994 and ultimately to 16 in 2001.

House of Lords reforms (1999)

Under the

Lord Maenan
).

Writings

Known for his interest in Irish history, he wrote a number of books on the topic. Peace By Ordeal: An Account from First-Hand Sources of the Negotiation and Signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, published in 1935, is arguably his best-known work. It documents the negotiations of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 between Irish and British representatives. His account uses primary sources from the time, many however anonymous. Commentators differ widely on its merits and reliability.[41][42]

Longford came greatly to admire Éamon de Valera and was chosen as the co-author of his official biography Éamon de Valera, which was published in 1970, co-written with Thomas P. O'Neill. He campaigned for decades to have the Hugh Lane bequest pictures restored to Dublin, and with Lord Moyne and Sir Denis Mahon, brokered a compromise-sharing agreement in 1959.[43]

Personal life

At Oxford, Longford met his wife,

Lady Margaret Hall
. Their marriage produced four sons and four daughters, followed by 26 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.

Longford died from heart failure at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on 3 August 2001, at the age of 95, and was cremated at Mortlake Crematorium.[13][49]

His wife,

Duke of Wellington, and a volume of memoirs, The Pebbled Shore. She stood for Parliament as Labour candidate for Cheltenham in the 1935 general election and for Oxford in 1950
.

The then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said of Longford after his death: "He was a great man of passionate integrity and humanity, and a great reformer committed to modernising the law, while also caring deeply for individuals".[9]

Arms

Coat of arms of Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, KG, PC
Coronet
An Earl's Coronet
Crest
Out of a mural crown Or a demi eagle displayed Gules beaked Or.
Escutcheon
Quarterly Or and Gules in dexter chief an eagle displayed Vert.
Supporters
Dexter a lion Azure charged on the shoulder with an escarbuncle Or sinister a griffin Azure winged Ermine beaked and membered Or.
Motto
GLORIA VIRTUTIS UMBRA

See also

  • The Longford Lectures
  • The Longford Prize

References

  1. ^ Inherited the Earldom of Longford on 4 February 1961.
  2. ^ Hoge, Warren (6 August 2001). "Lord Longford, Champion of Eccentric Causes, Dies at 95". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
  3. ^ "Longford Prize". longfordtrust.org.
  4. ^ a b Stanford, Peter. "Obituary: Lord Longford". The Guardian. London.
  5. ^ a b c d Stanford, Peter (6 August 2001). "Lord Longford". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 23 October 2013.
  6. ^ "PORNOGRAPHY: THE LONGFORD REPORT (Hansard, 29 November 1972)".
  7. ^ "The Longford Report » 23 Sep 1972 » the Spectator Archive".
  8. ^ Walker, Andrew (19 October 2006). "The saint and the sinner". BBC News.
  9. ^ a b "Campaigning Lord Longford dies". cnn.com. 3 August 2001.
  10. ^ Aitken, Jonathan (2007). Heroes and Contemporaries. Continuum.
  11. ^ a b Stanford, Peter (7 July 2003). "Dangerous Liaison". The Telegraph.
  12. ^ Smith, Anna Marie (1994). New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality: Britain, 1968–1990. Cambridge University Press. p. 205. Earl of Longford homosexuality.
  13. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/76133. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  14. ^ "Campaigner Lord Longford dies", BBC News, 3 August 2001. Retrieved on 31 March 2007.
  15. ^ Craig, Mary. Longford — A Biographical Portrait (Hodder & Stoughton, 1978), pp. 59–61
  16. ^ "No. 37305". The London Gazette. 12 October 1945. p. 5026.
  17. ^ "UK Parliament; House of Lords". House of Lords; Volume 627. 15 October 2001.
  18. ^ "Peering at the Catholic lords". Catholic Herald. 18 January 1985.
  19. ^ Mary Craig, Longford — A Biographical Portrait (Hodder & Stoughton, 1978), pp. 149
  20. ^ "No. 45349". The London Gazette. 23 April 1971. p. 4083.
  21. ^ Stanford, Peter, "Looking for a Way Out", The Independent, 20 July 2003; retrieved on 31 March 2007.
  22. ^ "ABOUT US". New Bridge Foundation. Archived from the original on 27 November 2014. Retrieved 16 November 2014.
  23. ^ "Inside Story: Prison media". The Independent. 18 February 2008. Retrieved 16 November 2014.
  24. ^ Billington, Rachel (November 2014). "Month by Month". Inside Time Newspaper.
  25. ^ "Crime – a challenge to us all: report of the Labour Party Study Group (Chairman: Lord Longford)". London: Labour Party Study Group. 1964.
  26. ISBN 9781845968151.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  27. Brass Tacks. 6 July 1977. Archived from the original
    on 18 October 2020.
  28. ^ "Case for release of Myra Hindley From Mr David L Astor and Lord Longford". The Times. 13 December 1994.
  29. ^ Staff, Duncan (13 October 2006). "Dangerous Liaison". The Guardian.
  30. ^ "How Moors murderer Brady had access to vulnerable teens in jail". BBC News. 26 June 2019.
  31. ^ "Hindley votes claim lashed". thefreelibrary.com. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  32. ^ "Why Myra must never be freed; Scots detective who arrested evil Hindley ends 30-year silence". bernardomahoney.com. 23 March 2016. Archived from the original on 9 December 2008.
  33. ^ "With release in sight and after 36 years in jail, Myra Hindley dies". The Guardian. 15 November 2002.
  34. ISBN 0-7509-3248-1
    .
  35. ^ Galloway, Bruce. Prejudice and Pride: Discrimination Against Gay People in Modern Britain, Routledge & Keegan Paul Publishing, 1983, (page 85 – Nigel Warner).
  36. ^ Baker, Paul (2005). Public Discourses of Gay Men. Routledge.
  37. ^ "Workers' Liberty". workersliberty.org.
  38. ^ Julian Clary – The Mincing Machine Tour – Virgin Video Media (1989)
  39. ^ Stonewall website – Sexual Offences Amendment Bill (1999) – Parliamentary Briefing (page 11)
  40. ^ "No. 55672". The London Gazette. 19 November 1999. p. 12349.
  41. ISBN 978-0-933256-53-8
    .
  42. ^ Michael Collins. Soldier and Statesman by Piaras Beaslaí (Dublin, 1937), Appendix, pp. 414-420
  43. ^ Foster, Roy (30 May 2015). "How Ireland was robbed of Hugh Lane's great art collection". The Guardian.
  44. ^ "Obituaries — Patrick Pakenham". The Daily Telegraph. 22 June 2005.
  45. ^ "Hon. Kevin John Toussaint Pakenham". National Portrait Gallery, London. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  46. ^ "Team: Kevin Pakenham". pakenhampartners.com. Archived from the original on 23 December 2018. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
  47. ^ "Ruth Lesley Pakenham (née Jackson)". National Portrait Gallery, London. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  48. ^ "Kevin Pakenham obituary". The Times. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  49. ^ "Mortlake Crematorium" (PDF). On Kew. Spring 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 December 2013.
  50. ^ Bradford, Sarah (24 October 2002). "The Countess of Longford". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 6 July 2009. Retrieved 22 October 2008.

Films about Lord Longford

  • Ian Brady
    .

Books about Lord Longford

External links
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