Stan newens autobiography of a face

Arthur Stanley Newens, In Quest of a Fairer Society: My Life and Politics

The Memoir Club, pp, £, ISBN

reviewed by Ian Birchall

The recent death of Tony Benn prompted the question: what has happened to the Labour left?

A similar question is posed by the autobiography of Stan Newens. Newens was a Labour MP from to , and again from to ; after that he was for fifteen years a Member of the European Parliament. His memoirs, clearly based on detailed notes, record his activities over several decades; to someone like myself, a little younger than Newens and a rank-and-file activist, they provide a fascinating perspective on events I lived through.

Newens’ background was close to those he set out to represent.

Stan newens autobiography of a face

Born into the ‘respectable working class’, he was the first in his family to go to university. He worked four years as a miner as an alternative to military service, then taught in an East London comprehensive. Nor was parliament the gateway to a