Frank Beswick, Baron Beswick Explained

Honorific-Prefix:The Right Honourable
The Lord Beswick
Honorific-Suffix:PC
Office:Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
Term Start:February 1974
Term End:December 1975
Primeminister:Harold Wilson
Leader:The Lord Shepherd
Predecessor:The Lord Aberdare
Successor:The Lord Goronwy-Roberts
Office1:Minister of State for Industry
Primeminister1:Harold Wilson
Term Start1:11 March 1974
Term End1:4 December 1975
Predecessor1:Eric Heffer
Successor1:Gerald Kaufman
Office2:Chief Whip of the House of Lords
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms
Primeminister2:Harold Wilson
Term Start2:29 July 1967
Term End2:24 June 1970
Predecessor2:The Lord Shepherd
Successor2:The Earl St Aldwyn
Office3:Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs
Primeminister3:Harold Wilson
Term Start3:11 October 1965
Term End3:26 July 1967
Predecessor3:The Lord Taylor
Successor3:William Whitlock
Office5:Member of Parliament
for Uxbridge
Predecessor5:John Llewellin
Successor5:Charles Curran
Term Start5:5 July 1945
Term End5:18 September 1959
Office4:Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Term Start4:18 December 1964
Term End4:17 August 1987
Life Peerage
Birthname:Frank Beswick
Birth Date:21 August 1911
Birth Place:Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, England, UK
Nationality:British
Party:Labour Co-operative
Occupation:Politician

Frank Beswick, Baron Beswick, (21 August 1911 – 17 August 1987) was a British Labour Co-operative politician.

Born in 1911 in Nottingham,[1] Beswick's father was a coal miner. He was educated in Nottingham and then at the Working Men's College in London. He became a journalist and was elected to the London County Council. He was in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

Already a qualified pilot, he joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War and served with Transport Command. A Sergeant Pilot, he was commissioned Pilot Officer in April 1942, and promoted Flying Officer in October 1942 and Flight Lieutenant in March 1944. He remained in the RAFVR after the war, resigning his commission in 1952.

Beswick was elected to Parliament for Uxbridge in 1945 and served until 1959. He was one of the British observers at the 1946 Bikini atomic tests. Following Labour's loss at the 1951 election, he became civil aviation correspondent for the Reynolds News, having been Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Civil Aviation. When he lost his seat in 1959, he was appointed political secretary of the London Co-operative Society.

He was created Baron Beswick, of Hucknall in the County of Nottinghamshire, on 18 December 1964. He served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Commonwealth Office from 1965 then became Government Chief Whip in the House of Lords in 1967. Continuing in the whip role into Opposition in 1970, in 1974 he was appointed Minister of State for Industry and Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, serving until 1975, and later became the first Chairman of British Aerospace. In 1975 he was UK signatory of the convention establishing the European Space Agency.

In 1985 he opened the first ever televised debate in the Lords.

Notes and References

  1. 'Strong Co-op voices', The Co-operative News, p. 18, 13 May 2008.