From railing against apartheid, the Vietnam war and the imprisonment of Soviet dissidents to campaigning for a national minimum wage and free TV licences for the elderly – the latter two long before they became government policies – the Labour MP David Winnick, who has died aged 92, built a reputation as a dogged parliamentarian led by unflappable conviction.
In 2005, Winnick triumphantly defeated the Blair government’s Iraq war-era motion to hold terrorist suspects for 90 days without charge thanks to his amendment limiting the term to 28 days. His tenacious efforts also saw smaller but still worthy initiatives come to fruition, such as a ban on ageist job advertising and an extension of the Race Relations Act to employment and housing.
David Julian Winnick was born in Brighton to Jewish parents, Eugene, a chemical company representative, and Rose (née Cohen). After finishing school, Winnick obtained a diploma in social administration from the London School of Economics and completed his national service with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. He subsequently became a branch secretary in the Clerical and Administrative Workers’ Union (later Apex).
Winnick, whose interest in political activism arose during the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Suez Crisis, became a local councillor in Willesden in 1959. His main concerns were racism and corrupt landlords. In 1963 he joined the left-wing Labour newspaper Tribune as advertising manager before standing in Harwich in the general election the following year.
With the Willesden-Wembley council merger in 1965 to form the London borough of Brent, Winnick served as councillor until he won the seat for Croydon South from the Conservatives in the 1966 election. An energetic new MP, Winnick reportedly made four speeches and asked 27 questions in his first five weeks.
He lost the seat in 1970 with Ted Heath’s Tory ascendancy. During the 1970s, Winnick worked for the UK Immigrants Advisory Service, which he would later chair from 1984 to 1990.
Winnick was chosen to fight for the Walsall seat in the 1976 by-election when the sitting member, John Stonehouse, faked his own death amid a storm of financial difficulties, only to turn up in Australia a month later. The seat fell to the Conservatives, but Winnick won the West Midlands seat back for Labour in the 1979 general election. He spent the next 38 years – until 2017 – as the Labour MP for Walsall North.
While fervently opposing the Vietnam war and calling for the release of Nelson Mandela, he was not strictly a pacifist, supporting the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as well as earlier British interventions in Kuwait and Bosnia.
In 1967 he reportedly came close to blows with the then 82-year-old Manny Shinwell, a fellow Jewish Labour MP whose stance on the Six-Day War Winnick found too pro-Israel.
He shared common ground with Margaret Thatcher over President Reagan visiting the Nazi war cemetery at Bitburg in 1985.
Winnick was involved in the home affairs committee and attended inquiries into rising antisemitism in Britain later in his career.
He left the Commons on May 3, 2017 after being defeated in the general election, losing his seat in Brexit-supporting Walsall.
Winnick married Turkish linguist and teacher Bengi Rona in 1968. They divorced in 1993. He is survived by a son.
ELIANA JORDAN
David Winnick: born June 26, 1933. Died March 25, 2026
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