Ian Mikardo
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Ian Mikardo (9 July 1908 - 6 May 1993), commonly known as Mik, was a British Labour and Co-operative politician. An ardent socialist and a Zionist, he remained a backbencher throughout his four decades in the House of Commons. He was a member of Labour's National Executive Committee from 1950 until 1978, and Chairman of the Labour Party 1970 to 1971.
Mikardo's parents were Jewish refugees from the Russian Empire - his mother from Warsaw, his father from Podolia in Ukraine. They came to London separately around 1900, and married some years later. They worked as tailors and in 1907, they moved to Portsmouth where they were employed repairing uniforms for the Royal Navy. Mikardo was born in Porstmouth the following year. He attended the Beneficial Society's School and the Omega Street School. In 1919 he came top in Portsmouth's pass-list for the eleven plus exam, and went to Portsmouth Southern Secondary School for Boys. From the age of eleven he also attended Aria College, a rabbinical seminary.
Concerned by injustice and inequality from boyhood, Mikardo was influenced by the works of R. H. Tawney and George Bernard Shaw in his teens. he attended political lectures at various clubs and societies in London in the 1920s, principally amongst the Jewish community. He joined both the Labour Party and Poale Zion (the Zionist Workers' Movement) in the late 1920s. He was already a Zionist, and had given his first public speech at a meeting of the Portsmouth Zionist Society in 1922, at the age of thirteen.
After leaving school, Mikardo settled in Stepney, where he had a variety of jobs. He married in 1931 and had two daughters by 1935. He studied scientific management, but was sceptical about "Taylorism" and developed his own theories. He became a freelance management consultant and during the Second World War, he worked on increasing efficiency in aircraft and armaments manufacturing, principally at Woodley Aerodrome in Reading. He was treasurer of the World Airways Joint Committee. He settled in Reading and at the end of the war he was selected by the local Labour Party for the 1945 general election, beating James Callaghan and Austen Albu.
Mikardo was duly elected Member of Parliament in 1945, over-turning a large Conservative majority. He held Reading, which became a highly marginal seat, until 1959 when he was infamously ousted by fellow Asset (later MSF) trade unionist Peter Emery. The Labour Party continues to refer to multiple-carbon copy lists of party supporters (used to allow party activists to contact those who had not voted) as 'Reading Pads'.
He was a member of the left wing of the Labour Party throughout his political career, writing for Tribune. In 1947 he co-authored, with Michael Foot and Richard Crossman, the Keep Left pamphlet, and was a Bevanite in the 1950s. He was also active on international affairs.
He was MP for Poplar from 1964, representing the area of London where his parents had first settled, and for Tower Hamlets from 1974. He retired from Parliament in 1987. Within Parliament he was known as the Commons' bookmaker, willing to take bets on all manner of political events.