Andrew Faulds

Andrew Matthew William Faulds (1 March 1923 – 31 May 2000) was a British actor and politician.

Early life

Born in Isoko, Tanganyika, to missionary parents, Faulds married Bunty Whitfield in 1945.^[1] During the Second World War he served in both the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm.^[2]

After graduating from the University of Glasgow, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1948 but first came to a wider public recognition playing Jet Morgan in Charles Chilton's radio drama Journey into Space on the BBC Light Programme.^[3]

Career

Actor

In 1959, Faulds and his wife played host to Paul Robeson, who had travelled to Britain to appear at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon in Tony Richardson's production of Othello. Robeson had only recently been allowed to travel abroad again following the revocation of his passport. It was during this visit that Robeson inspired Faulds to take up political activism.^[3]

Faulds maintained his acting career throughout the 1960s and 1970s and, in particular became a key part of film director Ken Russell's repertory company, appearing in, among other films, Dante's Inferno (1967) (as William Morris), The Devils (1971), Mahler (1974) and Lisztomania (1975). Notably, he appeared in Russell's film The Music Lovers (1971) alongside Glenda Jackson who was also to go on to become a Labour MP.^[3]

One of Faulds' best remembered roles is Phalerus in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), taking part in the skeleton fight scene with model work by Ray Harryhausen. Another was in one of Tony Hancock's television programmes, the unseen voice of 'mayday' in "The Radio Ham" (1961).

Politician

Faulds first stood for Parliament as the Labour candidate in the 1963 by-election for the Stratford-on-Avon seat caused by the resignation of the scandal-hit John Profumo. He fought the constituency again in the General Election the following year, but on both occasions he was beaten by the Conservative future Cabinet member Angus Maude.

In the 1964 General Election, the Labour Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, had been defeated in controversial circumstances in the Smethwick constituency by Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths. Smethwick had become the home of immigrants from the Commonwealth in the years following the Second World War and Griffiths' campaign had been critical of government policy. Increasing the Labour vote in the Smethwick constituency for the first time since 1950, Faulds defeated Griffiths in the UK general election, 1966 and became Labour Member of Parliament for the constituency until his retirement in 1997. (The constituency was renamed Warley East in 1974.) Smethwick remained the focus of much racial tension in Britain throughout Faulds' office, in particular following the "Rivers of Blood" Speech by Enoch Powell in 1968 which Faulds characterised as "... unchristian ... unprincipled, undemocratic and racialist."^[3] Faulds has sometimes been named as a supporter of capital punishment on the basis of off-the-cuff remarks, but he is listed in Hansard as voting against the restoration of the death penalty in 1969.

In 1970s Faulds became known for verbally attacking Norman St John-Stevas and said that he "has not the capacity to put a bun in anybody's oven" when the discussion got heated over abortion topic. In 1978 he was pressured to apologise for calling John Davies, the Shadow Foreign Secretary at the time, a "fat-arsed twit" and then he was scrutinised ten years later for calling David Shaw "an honourable shit".^[4]

A europhile, Faulds was one of only five Labour MPs to vote for the Third Reading of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, defying his party whip, which was to abstain.^[5]

Filmography

Notes

External links

• Andrew Faulds at the Internet Movie Database
• Catalogue of the Faulds papers at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics.