Frederick William Mulley, Baron Mulley, PC (3 July 1918 – 15 March 1995) was a British Labour Party politician, barrister-at-law and economist.
Early life
Mulley was born in
Leamington Spa,
Warwickshire, the son of William Mulley, a general labourer from
The Fens, and his wife Mary (née Boiles), a domestic servant. He attended
Warwick School on a scholarship between 1929 and 1936, leaving with the higher school certificate. As his father, who by this time was unemployed, could not afford to support him through university, Mulley instead became an accounts clerk under the national health insurance scheme.
[Edmund Dell, "Mulley, Frederick William, Baron Mulley (1918–1995)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, October 2008. Retrieved 7 January 2024. ] He served in the Worcestershire Regiment during the Second World War, reaching the rank of
sergeant, but was captured in 1940 and spent five years as a prisoner of war in Germany. During this time he obtained a BSc in economics from the University of London as an external student and became a chartered secretary.
[ Worcestershire Regiment (29th/36th of Foot) Web site]
At the end of the war, Mulley received an adult scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a first-class degree in politics, philosophy and economics in 1947.
Parliamentary career
Mulley had been a member of the Labour Party and the National Association of Clerks and Administrative Workers since 1936,
and at the 1945 general election he unsuccessfully contested the constituency of Sutton Coldfield. He became Member of Parliament for Sheffield Park in 1950, a position he held until deselected by his local party prior to the 1983 general election, when his constituency disappeared in a redistribution of boundaries.
During a long career in politics Mulley held many ministerial positions, including Minister of Aviation (1965–67), Minister for Disarmament (1967–69), and Minister of Transport (1969–70, 1974–75). While at the Transport Ministry he believed it would be inappropriate to be seen to be a car driver; thus, although he owned an Austin Maxi, his wife was the sole user of it during this period.
In 1975 Harold Wilson brought him into the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science, and in 1976 became Secretary of State for Defence until the Labour Party's defeat at the 1979 general election.
Writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, former Cabinet minister Edmund Dell argued that Mulley was both a party loyalist of "unassailable" working-class credentials and a genuine Oxbridge intellectual, an unusual combination that made him valuable to Wilson and to Wilson's successor, James Callaghan.
House of Lords
Mulley did not seek re-election at the House of Commons in 1983 and was created a
life peer as
Baron Mulley, of Manor Park in the City of
Sheffield on 30 January 1984,
after which and he held a variety of directorial positions.
Legacy
A main road in the Lower Don Valley in Sheffield is named after him.
External links
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