David Winnick obituary
For much of his career, David Winnick, Labour MP for 42 years – representing Walsall North for 38 of them – was a dogged parliamentarian, originally of the Tribunite left and never aspiring to ministerial office.Yet he will be best remembered for an act of singular courage when he succeeded in defeating the plans of the Blair government in its Iraq war-era attempt to hold terrorist suspects for up to 90 days without charge.Winnick, who has died aged 92, had supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but took his stand on civil liberties grounds and, much to the aggravation of ministers, led the charge against the prolonged detention proposal in the Commons in 2005 – and then in the home affairs committee against a further attempt by the subsequent Brown administration to hold suspects for 42 days.Winnick’s successful amendment limited the term to 28 days; the vote against the terror bill was the first defeat for the Labour goverment, nine years after taking power.Winnick’s stand was of a piece with his concern for civil liberties – he also opposed the plans to introduce identity cards – but he was no pacifist.
He had also supported the earlier British interventions in Kuwait and Bosnia, insisting it was right to expel tyrants in the absence of effective action by the United Nations,These stances caused a falling-out with some leftist colleagues and the possible embarrassment of praise in the Commons from Douglas Hurd, then foreign secretary, at the time of the Gulf war in 1991: “I have often disagreed with the honourable gentleman but I have always recognised that he is a through-and-through United Nations man,He believes in collective security and international order,He is following the logic of his convictions,”Those convictions were strong, permanent and undeterred by hostility or unpopularity.
A slight, dour figure, often to be seen scurrying along the corridors of Westminster with sheaves of parliamentary papers under his arm, Winnick struggled for attention and his interventions in the Commons chamber were often overwrought and even rancorous in tone.His causes were worthy and unshowy, such as free television licences for elderly people and a national minimum wage, long before they became government policy.He described himself to the journalist Andrew Roth as unclubbable and was said by his agent to be a combination of public extrovert and private individual.But he served diligently in parliament for more than 40 years, first for Croydon South (1966 to 1970) then, from 1979 to 2017, for Walsall North, an industrial Black Country constituency that was never entirely safe for Labour.Winnick was born in Brighton, into a Jewish family, the son of Eugene, a chemical company representative, and his wife Rose (nee Cohen), who left home when her son was eight.
His childhood and schooling were disrupted by wartime evacuation to Northamptonshire, though he would later obtain a diploma in social administration from the London School of Economics,His education came about otherwise from voracious reading in Brighton public library,After national service with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, he became a clerk, first for an engineering firm and then as a branch secretary in the then Clerical and Administrative Workers’ union (later evolving into Apex until absorbed into the General, Municipal and Boilermakers’ union),His political activism was stirred by the Suez invasion and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and he joined the Labour party in 1957, serving as a local councillor, first in Willesden, in north-west London, from 1959 and then, after the council merged with Wembley in 1965 to form the London borough of Brent, he served as a councillor there too until he became an MP,He was made advertising manager for Tribune, the leftwing Labour newspaper (now magazine), in 1963 and the following year fought Harwich – a hopeless cause – in the general election that brought the party to power under Harold Wilson.
In the landslide election of 1966 he won the Croydon seat, only to lose it four years later as Ted Heath’s Tories swept to power.Out of parliament during the 1970s, he worked for the Immigration Advisory Service, an organisation he would later chair for six years.It was Winnick’s misfortune to be chosen to fight the Walsall seat in a byelection in 1976 following the resignation of John Stonehouse.The Labour MP and former minister had tried to fake his own death by disappearing from a beach in Miami, leaving his clothes behind in a neat pile, after getting into financial difficulties, only to be discovered a month later trying to start a new life under an assumed name in Australia.The seat understandably fell to the Conservatives on a 22% swing, but Winnick won it back for Labour in the 1979 general election and held it through eight subsequent elections, with majorities generally in the low thousands.
In parliament, his early reputation was as a trade union leftwinger.He supported Tony Benn for the deputy leadership of the party in 1981 and stood for treasurer of the Tribune group before moving aside for Michael Meacher.As any ministerial ambitions died away, and with Labour in opposition, he busied himself on the home affairs committee and then on the house procedures committee.From that experience stemmed his outrage over the parliamentary expenses scandal in 2009, during which he outspokenly condemned the then Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, for declining to apologise for the administrative failings that facilitated the corruption.He was finally defeated in Walsall North, against the national trend, in the 2017 general election, one of the handful of seats in Brexit-voting areas that Labour lost that night.
At the declaration he said ruefully: “You have to take the rough with the smooth, and for some of us this was rough tonight.Anything that led to this result I take full responsibility for.” His victorious Tory opponent praised his long service to his constituents.Winnick was married to Bengi Rona, a Turkish linguist and teacher, from 1968 until their divorce in 1983.He is survived by a son.
David Julian Winnick, politician, born 26 June 1933; died 25 March 2026
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