Reginald Freeson
- The name of Reg Freeson, who has died aged 80, has became so identified with his political "murder" by the ambitious Ken Livingstone in 1987 that his earlier record as one of the most successful "sensible left" Labour MPs and ministers has been almost forgotten. But Ken wanted Reg's parliamentary seat at Brent East, in north-west London, and after a long and ferocious struggle succeeded in replacing him.
- The ousting had nothing to do with any great political gap between the two men. Freeson was a leftwinger with a classic record of supporting Irish unity, resisting racism - he edited the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight from 1964 to 1967 - opposing the Vietnam war and championing the underprivileged. He was a founder member of CND and one of the first five Labour MPs on the initial Aldermaston march. The only dividing issue was that he was a socialist Zionist while Livingstone was pro-Arab.[1]
- He was an evolving socialist, even in the revisionist Blairite days, and his Zionism moved on, too. As political secretary of the Poale Zion-Labour Zionists, in 1998 he urged an independent Palestinian state embracing the West Bank and Gaza. [1]
