In a community cafe in Rock Ferry, one of the most deprived parts of Wirral, a landline phone connected directly to Frank Field’s Westminster office. It was an ever-present link to the area’s veteran MP – not that they needed it.
Field, who represented Birkenhead for 40 years, could often be found mingling with residents in the Neo Community centre, where he would make himself at home, even down to washing the dishes. Volunteers knew they were in for a long chat if he said: “Shall we have a butty?”
“He would just rock up all the time and sit in the middle of the cafe chatting to people,” said Ema Wilkes, the founder and chief executive of Neo Community, which distributes foods to thousands of local families each year thanks to the Feeding Birkenhead scheme set up by the former MP. “He made politics human. The most important thing he ever did was making politics be real and have a face.”
Field, who died on Tuesday aged 81, is perhaps best known for his decades campaigning to end poverty. But on the Wirral it seems almost everyone has other lasting memories of him.
Anne Parsons, 78, first met Field in 2002 through her work in a local youth club. He described her as his “queen of hearts” when presenting her with an award for volunteering.
“It wasn’t like you would be fighting to speak to an MP,” she said. “You could just sit down with him like a normal person. Everywhere he went he’d be stopped by people. I really, really did love him.”
Jackie Knox, 62, remembers Field helping her mother with a minor dispute over some building work encroaching on to her terrace house decades ago. Her family called his office for help in the morning and by the afternoon he had popped round and sorted it.
In fact, Field enjoyed a natter so much that sometimes it was hard to get rid of him. “He was like Ken Dodd,” said Knox. “He forgot to go home.”
For many of her generation, Field was as familiar and immortal as the Three Graces across the River Mersey. But he never carried himself as a local dignitary. He didn’t have armies of assistants taking notes of his meetings, or drivers ferrying him to and fro. Field went everywhere by bus or on foot. Volunteers recall giving him lifts to the chiropodist “to get my tootsies done”.
Despite his down-to-earth nature, he was always treated with deep respect, said Knox. “As a child I grew up with respect for Frank Field because our parents and grandparents would mention his name – ‘Oh Frank’s doing this, Frank’s doing that’. It was like a comfort when you head his name because you knew something good was going to happen.”
Some of Field’s most powerful Commons speeches were drawn from the experiences of people who use the Neo Community centre.
In 2017 he reduced other MPs to tears when he described how one resident said they had had a “lucky week” because their family had been invited to a funeral and so they could eat the food left over after the wake.
Three years earlier, Field had established Feeding Birkenhead, which brings together churches, food banks, community groups and other organisations to try to eliminate hunger in the town, one of the UK’s poorest.
A decade later, that pioneering initiative has grown to become Feeding Britain, which now feeds 100,000 children during the school holidays.
“We thought this was going to be a stopgap for people but it’s getting worse,” said Judy Mellor, 67, a volunteer at the community centre. “There are more people coming through our doors now than there have ever been. It’s horrendous.”
On a day when Birkenhead is in mourning, it seems impossible to quantify the number of people helped by Field during his four decades in parliament. The thought of where the town – and Britain – might be if it wasn’t for their former MP was almost too much for Mellor to bare.
“I wouldn’t like to think about that because it’s a frightening thought,” she said, close to tears. “Where would we be if it wasn’t for Frank? Where would thousands and thousands of people be if it wasn’t for Frank? It’s a sad day. We could do with hundreds more like Frank down there.”
