Ian Mikardo (9 July 1908 – 6 May 1993), commonly known as Mik, was a British Labour Member of Parliament. An ardent socialist and a Zionist, he remained a backbencher throughout his four decades in the House of Commons. He was a member of National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in 1950–59 and 1960–78, and Chairman of the Labour Party in 1970–1971. He was also chairman of the International Committee of the Labour Party in 1973–78, His niece Barbara Tayler (1931–2011) was a publisher, writer and political activist. Mikardo became a surrogate father to her after her father died when she was two years old.

When he began school-aged three, his lack of English words made him the butt of jokes. His parents spoke Yiddish.

He attended The Old Beneficiary School known as "The Old Benny", in Portsea, Portsmouth, and the Omega Street School in Portsmouth. In 1919, he came top in Portsmouth's pass-list for the 11-plus, and went to Portsmouth Southern Grammar School for Boys. From the age of eleven he also attended Aria College, a rabbinical seminary. However the life of a cleric was not for him and he transferred to Portsmouth Grammar School. At this time he followed Portsmouth FC and he had an encyclopedic knowledge of all their matches.

Concerned by injustice and inequality from boyhood, Mikardo was influenced by the works of R. H. Tawney and George Bernard Shaw in his teens. He attended political lectures at various clubs and societies in London in the 1920s, principally amongst the Jewish community. He joined both the Labour Party and Poale Zion, the Zionist workers' movement affiliated to the Labour Party. He was already a Zionist, and had given his first public speech at a meeting of the Portsmouth Zionist Society in 1922, aged 13. and Mary joined the Labour Party and Poale Zion. They had two daughters by 1936. Mary suffered a heart attack in 1959 which was progressively disabling. in Reading. He was treasurer of the World Airways Joint Committee of National Air Communications.

Parliament and the Labour Party

After settling in Reading at the end of the war he was selected by the local Constituency Labour Party for the 1945 general election, beating James Callaghan and Austen Albu. On every topic, the National Health Service, education, social deprivation, nationalisation or socialism, he was seen as an inspiration to others. Mik, as he introduced himself, showed he had planned where he was going and the constituency members wanted to go with him. His integrity was obvious and beguiling, quite rare amongst professional politicians.

Mikardo was a member of the left wing of the Labour Party throughout his political career, writing for Tribune. In the post-war period, the Fabian Society was at the heart of Labour and social democratic thinking, and Mikardo contributed to the New Fabian Essays of 1952, edited by Anthony Crosland. These helped to reinvigorate the debate on the left after the fall of the Attlee government. Other contributors included Roy Jenkins, Richard Crossman and Denis Healey.

Mikardo's secretary at the time was Jo Richardson (1923–94) who began her political career working for him and later became a Member of Parliament herself. She co-ordinated the 'Keep Left Group' and went on to become the secretary of the Tribune Group. In 1951 Richardson was elected to Hornsey Borough Council and became the full-time secretary and working partner of Mikardo in his business, which involved trade with eastern Europe. In February 1958 Mikardo joined Stephen Swingler, Richardson, Harold Davies, Konni Zilliacus, Walter Monslow and Sydney Silverman, to form Victory for Socialism (VFS), which was co-ordinated by Richardson.

Mikardo was defeated in his Reading seat in 1959 but won Poplar in the General Election of 1964, representing the area of London where his parents had first settled. As the constituencies were reorganised over time, he went on to represent Bethnal Green and Bow from 1974 until 1983 and the Bow and Poplar from 1983 until his retirement from Parliament in 1987. Mikardo served as a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party from 1950–59 and 1960–78. He was also chairman of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries 1966–70 and Chairman of the Labour Party 1970–71.

In February 1973 Mikardo joined James Callaghan, Shadow Foreign Secretary, and Tom McNally, Secretary, International Department in an official Labour Party delegation visiting the Far East. On 27 March 1974 Mikardo, having already served as Chairman of the Labour Party, was elected chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, defeating a candidate from the right of the party, Arthur Bottomley, by 99–85 votes. A necessarily anonymous and discerning experienced clerk of the House of Commons remarked 'Ian Mikardo was simply the most skillful operator in committee that any of us ever saw.'

Keep Left and Keeping Left

In early 1947 a small number of the 'King's Speech dissenters' in the Labour Party formed the 'Keep Left' group and met on a regular basis during that year. Along with Richard Crossman, Michael Foot and Konni Zilliacus, Mikardo published a pamphlet of the same name in May 1947 in which the authors criticized the United States cold war policies and urged a closer relationship with Europe in order to create a "Third Force" in politics. This included the idea of nuclear disarmament and the formation of a European Security Treaty. During the period of office of Clement Attlee's Labour government, the Keep Left group attempted, through discussion and pamphlets, to produce practical proposals informed by socialist values. The group survived until April 1951. After that month's ministerial resignations it became one element within the much larger Bevanite faction.

Keep Left's concern was with modernisation and socialist ethics. This was evident in Harold Wilson's governments in the 1960s. Such sentiments contributed to ministerial conflicts with the trade unions over incomes policy and most thoroughly over Barbara Castle's proposals for trade union reform. The vision of a more rational and ethical society discussed by a group of talented young politicians two decades earlier was at odds with sentiments deeply rooted in their party.

Mikardo Committee on the Docks

The Mikardo Committee on the docks was set up by the Labour Party. Mikardo served on it, along with Andrew Cunningham, leader of the General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trade Union (GMB) in north-east England, John Hughes, of Ruskin College, Oxford, Jack Jones, later general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union then directly responsible for dockers, Michael Montague, later of the English Tourist Board, and Peter Shore MP.

A report in March 1965 exposed the problems of the docks industry. It recommended total restructuring of the docks under public ownership and with a system of decentralisation and workers' participation in management wider than for any other industry. The 1966 Labour Cabinet accepted the report. George Brown fought hard for it against ministerial resistance. However, the Labour government was unable to produce the Ports Bill until the last session of that parliament. The Bill when it came was a disappointment it was a long way short of implementing the proposals. See also: ARA General Belgrano: Controversy over the sinking

Poale Zion of Britain and the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland

Mikardo and his wife were immersed in Jewish causes and help for Israel, which they often visited. He worked with Mapam, the Israeli United Workers' Party, and abhorred gratuitous provocation of the Palestinian Arabs.

Books, journals, pamphlets, and articles

  • Centralised Control of Industry, pamphlet, 1944 Advocating the extension into peacetime of wartime control of industry
  • Keep Left (1947), Keeping Left (1950) Group of members of parliament, Michael Foot, Ian Mikardo, Richard Crossman
  • The Problems of Nationalization (Current affairs) (1948)
  • The Second Five Years – Pamphlet, 1948 Sets out a radical programme for the second post-war Labour Administration.
  • Consultation or joint management? book, 1949, contribution to the discussion of industrial democracy by J M Chalmers, Mikardo, G D H Cole
  • Tribune No 723 January 12–25, 1951, Mikardo, Michael Foot, Evelyn Anderson. Ronald Searle
  • It's a Mugs Game, Pamphlet, 1951 The bookmaker's trade.
  • It Need Not Happen, The Alternative to German Rearmament Barbara Castle, Richard Crossman, Tom Driberg, Mikardo, Harold Wilson, Aneurin Bevan, book 1951
  • The Immigration Story - What we are doing in Israel, Mikardo, 1953
  • Electioneering in Labour marginal constituencies, Mikardo, 1955
  • The Labour case Choice for Britain series, paperback, 1950, Herbert Morrison, Mikardo (author)
  • Labour: party or puppet? Frank Allaun, Mikardo, Jim Sillars, book 1972
  • New Fabian Essays by Ed. R H S Crossman
  • Esprit, 1952. Contient entre autres : Il est temps encore, par l'equipe de Esprit. Sur la route vietnamienne, par Paul Mus. L'Experience Travailliste :Socialisme et travaillisme, par François Sellier. Necessites economiques, Mikardo et al.
  • La Tribune des Peuples, No 4 1953. Contient entre autres : Il faut gagner la paix, par Aneurin Bevan (13p) Réflexions sur la décadence du capitalisme français, par Alfred Sauvy (14p) Le dilemme du Parti travailliste anglais, K. Martin, Mikardo et al.
  • Private Eye No.321: 5 April 1974 Article
  • Sense about defence: the report of the Labour Party Defence Study Group
  • Back-bencher - Ian Mikardo, Book, 1988 (Autobiography)
  • Docklands Redevelopment: How They Got It Wrong, Ian Mikardo, 1990

Death

Mikardo died, age 84, on 6 May 1993 from a stroke, whilst being treated for sarcoma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport, Cheshire. He was survived by his wife Mary and daughters Ruth and Judy.

Ian Mikardo High School in Bow is named after him.

Ian Mikardo Way, Caversham, Reading is named after him.

See also

  • British responses to the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire

References

  • short ITV news feature on Mikardo
  • An interview with Ian Mikardo, 1990