Frank Allaun

Frank Julian Allaun (27 February 1913 – 26 November 2002) was a British Labour politician.

Frank Allaun
Chair of The Labour Party
In office 1978–1979
Leader	James Callaghan
Preceded by	Joan Lestor
Succeeded by	Lena Jeger
Member of Parliament for Salford East
In office 26 May 1955 – 13 May 1983
Preceded by	Edward Arthur Hardy
Succeeded by	Stan Orme
Personal details
Born	27 February 1913 Manchester, England
Died	26 November 2002 (aged 89) Manchester, England

Born in Manchester,[1] Allaun was educated at Manchester Grammar School and worked as an engineer, shop assistant, tour leader, chartered accountant and journalist. He helped to organise the first Aldermaston March in 1958 and was chair of the Labour Peace Fellowship. Allaun was against British membership of the EEC.[2]

Allaun contested Manchester Moss Side in 1951. He was Member of Parliament for Salford East from 1955 to 1983.

He was a veteran of leftwing causes, especially the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), of which he was vice president from 1983. He was the first President of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy in 1973.[3] Allaun wrote several books on nuclear weapons including Stop the H-Bomb Race (1959) and The Wasted 30 Billions (1975).

In his book ‘’Next Stop Execution’’, Oleg Gordievsky stated that’s Allaun’s work with the peace movement and elsewhere was viewed favourably within the Soviet Union.

Naive or optimistic, or just unappreciative of war culture, Allaun was a straight up-and-down idealist. His style was intensely gentle, the voice never raised, but the questions - chiefly on peace and housing - insistent. The beautiful manners and the soft Lancashire voice must have got on ministerial nerves. But then, as one of the organisers of the first Aldermaston march, he helped launch a movement whose appeal in the late 1950s and 1960s did more than get on nerves.

Outside the peace movement, his preoccupation was with public housing, and the vastly increased expenditure he urged should be paid for by cuts, equally massive, in defence. Defence cuts would, of course, come, but, despite Allaun's life work, Britain remained a nuclear power.

Frank Allaun retired from the House of Commons in 1983 but continued to be active in politics. This included writing the books Spreading the News: A Guide To Media Reform (1989) and The Struggle for Peace (1992).

His recreations were walking and swimming.

His first wife died in 1986, and on 3 June 1989 he married Millie Bobker, née Greenberg, a widow and retired civil servant.

He died in Manchester in 2002 aged 89. His second wife, son and daughter survived him.

Notes

1. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1181144.ece/
2. David Butler and Uwe Kitzinger, The 1975 Referendum (London: Macmillan, 1976), p. 105, p. 235.
3. "c l p d - a potted history". CLPD. Retrieved 2 August 2015.

References

• Times Guide to the House of Commons, 1966 and 1979
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Frank Allaun