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Terence Fields (8 March 1937 – 28 June 2008) was a British politician and firefighter. A member of the Militant group, he was the Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Broadgreen from 1983 to 1992. He was expelled from the Labour Party in 1991 with the rest of Militant. Earlier he had been on the executive of the Fire Brigades Union.
Fields joined the Labour Party in 1968. He was active in the Fire Brigades Union's national 1977–78 strike and shortly afterward he joined the Militant group. At the Labour Party's special conference in 1980 on the question of how to elect the Labour leader, Fields spoke before Denis Healey and said: "We need coordinated action by the whole of our class to get the Tories out, and the democracy that is being pumped out in the capitalist press is their democracy, not ours. We will find a new democracy when we have created a socialist state in this country... To the weak-hearted, the traitors and cowards I say: 'Get out of our movement. There is no place for you. Cross the House of Commons."Francis Beckett "Obituary: Terry Fields" , The Guardian, 1 July 2008
Fields made his maiden speech on 24 June 1983.Mr Terry Fields (Liverpool, Broadgreen), "Orders of the Day: Industry and Privatisation" , Hansard, 24 June 1983 His interventions in Parliament focused on issues unique to Liverpool as well as Central America, unemployment, and the coal mining and maritime transport industries. Mr Terry Fields , Hansard Online Index
On 11 July 1991, Fields was jailed for refusing to pay his poll tax bill of £373. In defence of the court's decision, Labour leader Neil Kinnock said: "Law makers must not be law breakers. I have always made that clear." "1991: Anti-Poll Tax MP Jailed", BBC On this Day, 11 July Fields's sentence was for 60 days, meaning that he retained his seat in the House of Commons, as MPs only automatically lose their seat if they are imprisoned for more than a year. Labour Party members criticised Fields for his militant approach to the poll tax and his failure to support other Labour candidates, in particular Peter Kilfoyle in a by-election for the neighbouring constituency of Liverpool Walton, following Eric Heffer's death.
Fields was expelled from the Labour Party in December 1991 along with other members of Militant, including Dave Nellist, then the only other MP who was a member of the tendency.
In 2002, at the age of 65, he returned briefly to the limelight after entering a burning house to rescue a woman trapped inside.
Fields died at his family home in Netherton on Saturday 28 June 2008, of lung cancer. Bob Wareing, a Liverpool Labour MP for 25 years, said at the time: "Even though we might disagree on the methods used by Militant Tendency, we in Liverpool could not but respect the sincerity and principled behaviour of Terry Fields." A memorial meeting for Fields, held shortly after his death, attracted 200 people.Paillard, C. "Terry Fields Memorial Meeting" , The Socialist, 3 September 2008. (retrieved 25 June 2010)
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