Francis Beckett
Encyclopedia
Francis Beckett is an English
author, journalist, biographer, and contemporary historian. He has written biographies of Aneurin Bevan
, Clement Attlee
, Harold Macmillan
, Gordon Brown
and Tony Blair
. He has also written on education for the New Statesman
, The Guardian
and The Independent
. Beckett has been described as "an Old Labour romantic" by Guardian associate editor Michael White
.
, exactly 21 miles from the centre of London
, because his father, John Beckett, just released from wartime internment because of his fascist past, was under a form of house arrest
, unable to live within 20 miles of the capital or to travel more than five miles away from his home.
He was moved from school to school and home to home as his parents’ fragile finances ebbed and flowed, eventually spending four years at Beaumont College
, a Jesuit boarding school near Windsor, Berkshire
, where he claims to have been “force-fed a diet of beating, bullying and religious bigotry.”
He took A-levels at a London further education college and studied history and philosophy at Keele University
. There he was chosen by the English Speaking Union to be one of the two British student debaters to tour the USA in 1969.
, before becoming head of the press and publications department at the National Union of Students. He left to take a similar job in a trade union, was elected president of the National Union of Journalists
in 1980, and worked as a Labour Party
press officer during 1983-84. In 1983 he worked for the unsuccessful Labour Party deputy leadership campaign of John Silkin
.
Since 1984 he has been a freelance writer. He has written regularly on education for The Guardian
and The Independent
for 15 years and was education correspondent of the New Statesman
for seven. He has also written on politics, industrial relations, business and management, and the theatre, and edited two management publications. His New Statesman articles provided the main left wing critique of New Labour’s education policies, and more recently, he has been a leading critic of city academies, putting the argument against in various newspapers and writing his book The Great City Academy Fraud.
He has written a biography of his own father, John Beckett, a Labour MP from 1925 to 1931 and whip of the Independent Labour Party
group of MPs; later chief propagandist for Oswald Mosley
’s British Union of Fascists
and co-founder (with William Joyce
) of the National Socialist League
, who was interned during the second world war for his fascist activities.
He wrote a biography of Clement Attlee
. His biography of Tony Blair
, written with The Guardian
s Westminster Correspondent David Hencke, is hostile and damaging, and his 2009 book, Marching to the Fault Line, also written with David Hencke, is "the first attempt since its immediate aftermath to offer a full account of the [miners'] strike". It is, according to Neil Kinnock, "full of vital insights and written with a sense of pace that does justice to the tragic drama." He was general editor of the series of 20 books, Prime Ministers of the Twentieth Century. He has written biographies of four Prime Ministers - Attlee, Macmillan, Blair and Brown - but his Attlee biography is the most substantial, considered by Roy Jenkins - Attlee's first biographer - to be a landmark work, defining Attlee for a new generation. "Beckett gets near to the essence of Attlee, and does so in an easy, flowing narrative" wrote Jenkins.
Francis Beckett is editor of the national magazine published by the University of the Third Age.
Beckett's work gains strong reactions from across the political spectrum. His co-authored 2004 biography of Tony Blair was considered far too hostile by Roy Hattersley
, but his portrayal of Arthur Scargill
in his co-authored book on the 1984-5 miners’ strike led Andrew Murray
, in the Morning Star
to advise readers not to "feed the jackals". In response, with co-author David Hencke, Beckett insisted that the writers were not jackals but lifelong trade unionists, and asserted that "...for Murray to try to make out that you are doing something bad by buying or reading our book is not just censorship, but also the bitterest form of ideological rigidity and sectarianism".
In 2010 What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? was published by Biteback. The book claims that the baby boomer generation inherited the good years, and pulled the ladder up after them.
His plays are published by Samuel French, having been performed on the London fringe or on radio, and his short stories appear in the Young Oxford series published by OUP.
Contemporary history:
"Firefighters and the Blitz" Merlin 2010
What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us, Biteback Publishing, July 2010.
Education
Plays
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
author, journalist, biographer, and contemporary historian. He has written biographies of Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin "Nye" Bevan was a British Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people...
, Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955...
, Harold Macmillan
Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963....
, Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...
and Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
. He has also written on education for the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
. Beckett has been described as "an Old Labour romantic" by Guardian associate editor Michael White
Michael White (journalist)
Michael White is an associate editor and former political editor of The Guardian.-Early life:White was raised in Wadebridge, Cornwall...
.
Early life
Francis Beckett was born in 1945 in CheniesChenies
Chenies is a village in the very eastern part of south Buckinghamshire, England, near the border with Hertfordshire. It is situated to the east of Chesham and the Chalfonts. Chenies is also a civil parish within Chiltern district....
, exactly 21 miles from the centre of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, because his father, John Beckett, just released from wartime internment because of his fascist past, was under a form of house arrest
House arrest
In justice and law, house arrest is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to his or her residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all...
, unable to live within 20 miles of the capital or to travel more than five miles away from his home.
He was moved from school to school and home to home as his parents’ fragile finances ebbed and flowed, eventually spending four years at Beaumont College
Beaumont College
Beaumont College was a Jesuit public school in Old Windsor, Berkshire, England. In 1967 the school closed. The property became a conference centre, and from 2008 an hotel.-History of the estate:...
, a Jesuit boarding school near Windsor, Berkshire
Windsor, Berkshire
Windsor is an affluent suburban town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is widely known as the site of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British Royal Family....
, where he claims to have been “force-fed a diet of beating, bullying and religious bigotry.”
He took A-levels at a London further education college and studied history and philosophy at Keele University
Keele University
Keele University is a campus university near Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as an experimental college dedicated to a broad curriculum and interdisciplinary study, Keele is most notable for pioneering the dual honours degree in Britain...
. There he was chosen by the English Speaking Union to be one of the two British student debaters to tour the USA in 1969.
Career
He worked as a journalist, a teacher, an adult education lecturer, and West Midlands organiser for the Housing charity ShelterShelter (charity)
Shelter is a registered charity in England and Scotland that campaigns to end homelessness and bad housing. It gives advice, information and advocacy to people in need, and tackles the root causes of bad housing by lobbying government and local authorities for new laws and policies to improve the...
, before becoming head of the press and publications department at the National Union of Students. He left to take a similar job in a trade union, was elected president of the National Union of Journalists
National Union of Journalists
The National Union of Journalists is a trade union for journalists in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. It was founded in 1907 and has 38,000 members. It is a member of the International Federation of Journalists .-Structure:...
in 1980, and worked as a Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
press officer during 1983-84. In 1983 he worked for the unsuccessful Labour Party deputy leadership campaign of John Silkin
John Silkin
John Ernest Silkin, PC was an English Labour politician and solicitor.He was the third son of Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin, and a younger brother of Samuel Silkin, Baron Silkin of Dulwich. He was educated at Dulwich College, the University of Wales, and Trinity Hall at the University of...
.
Since 1984 he has been a freelance writer. He has written regularly on education for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
for 15 years and was education correspondent of the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
for seven. He has also written on politics, industrial relations, business and management, and the theatre, and edited two management publications. His New Statesman articles provided the main left wing critique of New Labour’s education policies, and more recently, he has been a leading critic of city academies, putting the argument against in various newspapers and writing his book The Great City Academy Fraud.
He has written a biography of his own father, John Beckett, a Labour MP from 1925 to 1931 and whip of the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
group of MPs; later chief propagandist for Oswald Mosley
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists...
’s British Union of Fascists
British Union of Fascists
The British Union was a political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by Sir Oswald Mosley as the British Union of Fascists, in 1936 it changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists and then in 1937 to simply the British Union...
and co-founder (with William Joyce
William Joyce
William Joyce , nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was an Irish-American fascist politician and Nazi propaganda broadcaster to the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He was hanged for treason by the British as a result of his wartime activities, even though he had renounced his British nationality...
) of the National Socialist League
National Socialist League
The National Socialist League was a short lived Nazi political movement in the United Kingdom immediately before the Second World War.-Formation:...
, who was interned during the second world war for his fascist activities.
He wrote a biography of Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955...
. His biography of Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
, written with The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
s Westminster Correspondent David Hencke, is hostile and damaging, and his 2009 book, Marching to the Fault Line, also written with David Hencke, is "the first attempt since its immediate aftermath to offer a full account of the [miners'] strike". It is, according to Neil Kinnock, "full of vital insights and written with a sense of pace that does justice to the tragic drama." He was general editor of the series of 20 books, Prime Ministers of the Twentieth Century. He has written biographies of four Prime Ministers - Attlee, Macmillan, Blair and Brown - but his Attlee biography is the most substantial, considered by Roy Jenkins - Attlee's first biographer - to be a landmark work, defining Attlee for a new generation. "Beckett gets near to the essence of Attlee, and does so in an easy, flowing narrative" wrote Jenkins.
Francis Beckett is editor of the national magazine published by the University of the Third Age.
Beckett's work gains strong reactions from across the political spectrum. His co-authored 2004 biography of Tony Blair was considered far too hostile by Roy Hattersley
Roy Hattersley
Roy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley is a British Labour politician, author and journalist from Sheffield. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.-Early life:...
, but his portrayal of Arthur Scargill
Arthur Scargill
Arthur Scargill is a British politician who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers from 1982 to 2002, leading the union through the 1984–85 miners' strike, a key event in British labour and political history...
in his co-authored book on the 1984-5 miners’ strike led Andrew Murray
Andrew Murray (campaigner and journalist)
Andrew Murray is a British campaigner and journalist who has been Chair of the Stop the War Coalition from its formation in 2001. In this capacity he presided at the concluding rally of what is claimed as the largest political demonstration in British history, against the Iraq war in 2003...
, in the Morning Star
The Morning Star
The Morning Star is a left wing British daily tabloid newspaper with a focus on social and trade union issues. Articles and comment columns are contributed by writers from socialist, social democratic, green and religious perspectives....
to advise readers not to "feed the jackals". In response, with co-author David Hencke, Beckett insisted that the writers were not jackals but lifelong trade unionists, and asserted that "...for Murray to try to make out that you are doing something bad by buying or reading our book is not just censorship, but also the bitterest form of ideological rigidity and sectarianism".
In 2010 What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us? was published by Biteback. The book claims that the baby boomer generation inherited the good years, and pulled the ladder up after them.
His plays are published by Samuel French, having been performed on the London fringe or on radio, and his short stories appear in the Young Oxford series published by OUP.
Books
Biographies:- The Rebel Who Lost His Cause: The Tragedy of John BeckettJohn BeckettJohn Warburton Beckett was a leading figure in British politics between the world wars, both in the Labour Party and Fascist movements....
, MP, Allison and Busby, 1999 - Nye Bevan, (co-author Clare Beckett) Haus Publishing, 2004
- The Survivor: Tony Blair in peace and war (co-author David Hencke) Aurum Press, 2005 (in paperback as The Survivor)
- Gordon Brown, Haus Publishing, June 2007.
- Clem Attlee, Politicos, re-issued March 2007
- Laurence Olivier,Haus Publishing, 2005
- Harold Macmillan, Haus Publishing, 2006.
Contemporary history:
- Stalin's British Victims, Sutton Publishing, 2004
- Enemy Within - The Rise and Fall of British Communism, John Murray (hb), 1995; Merlin Press (pb), 1998
- Marching to the Fault Line – the miners’ strike 1984-5 (co-author David Hencke), Constable and Robinson, 2009
"Firefighters and the Blitz" Merlin 2010
What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do For Us, Biteback Publishing, July 2010.
Education
- The Great City Academy Fraud, Continuum, March 2007.
- How To Create a Successful School" Biteback 2010
Plays
- Money makes you Happy, Samuel French, 2008
- The Right Honourable Lady, Samuel French, 2009