Frank Allaun

Frank Julian Allaun (27 February 1913 – 26 November 2002) was a British Labour politician.

Born in Manchester, Allaun was educated at Manchester Grammar School and worked as an engineer, shop assistant, tour leader, chartered accountant and journalist. He helped to organise the first Aldermaston March in 1958 and was chair of the Labour Peace Fellowship. Allaun was against British membership of the EEC.

Allaun contested Manchester Moss Side in 1951. He was Member of Parliament for Salford East from 1955 to 1983.

He was a veteran of leftwing causes, especially the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, of which he was vice president from 1983.

Naive or optimistic, or just unappreciative of war culture, Allaun was a straight up-and-down idealist. His style was intensely gentle, the voice never raised, but the questions - chiefly on peace and housing - insistent. The beautiful manners and the soft Lancashire voice must have got on ministerial nerves. But then, as one of the organisers of the first Aldermaston march, he helped launch a movement whose appeal in the late 1950s and 1960s did more than get on nerves.

Outside the peace movement, his preoccupation was with public housing, and the vastly increased expenditure he urged should be paid for by cuts, equally massive, in defence. Defence cuts would, of course, come, but, despite Allaun's life work, Britain remained a nuclear power. His books included Spreading The News: A Guide To Media Reform (1989) and The Struggle For Peace (1992).

His recreations were walking and swimming.

His first wife, Lilian, whom he married in 1941, died in 1986. He married secondly in 1989 to Millie Bobker.

He died in Manchester in 2002 aged 89. His second wife, son and daughter survived him.

References

http://www.wcml.org.uk/people/frankallaun4.htm

• Times Guide to the House of Commons, 1966 and 1979
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Frank Allaun

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Edward Arthur Hardy	Member of Parliament for Salford East 1955–1983	Succeeded by Stan Orme
Political offices
Preceded by Joan Lestor	Chair of The Labour Party 1978–1979	Succeeded by Lena Jeger