Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford

Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, (5 December 1905 – 3 August 2001), known to his family as Frank Longford and styled Lord Pakenham from 1945 to 1961, was a British politician and social reformer.

A member of the Labour Party, he was one of its longest-serving politicians.

After a disastrous spell in stockbroking with Buckmaster & Moore, in 1931 the 25-year-old Pakenham joined the Conservative Research Department where he developed education policy for the Conservative Party.

His wife Elizabeth persuaded him to become a socialist.

They were married on 3 November 1931 and had eight children.

In 1940, only a few months after the onset of the Second World War, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was invalided out of the armed forces.

The same year, he became a Roman Catholic.

During the war, Pakenham was hired as an assistant for William Beveridge, and was involved in the production of the Beveridge Report and the 1944 book Full Employment in a Free Society.

Pakenham then embarked on a political career.

In July 1945 he contested Oxford against the sitting Conservative member, Quintin Hogg, but was defeated by nearly 3,000 votes.

In October of that year he was created Baron Pakenham, of Cowley in the City of Oxford, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, by the Labour government of Clement Attlee, and took his seat in the House of Lords as one of the few Labour peers.

He was immediately appointed a Lord-in-waiting by Attlee.

His wife was initially dismayed by this, for she had been brought up a Unitarian and associated the Church of Rome with reactionary politics, but in 1946 she joined the same church.

He held cabinet positions on several occasions between 1947 and 1968.

In 1947, he was appointed deputy Foreign Secretary, outside the cabinet, with special responsibility for the British zone in occupied Germany.

He made headlines by telling German audiences that the British people forgave them for what had happened in the war; at his death, the Lord Bishop of Birmingham remarked that West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was supposed to have "counted him as one of the founders of the Federal Republic".

In May 1948, he was moved to the lower-profile role of Minister of Civil Aviation and was sworn of the Privy Council in June of that year.

He continued in this post until May 1951.

From May until the fall of the administration in October 1951, he was First Lord of the Admiralty.

He advocated for rehabilitation programmes and helped create the modern British parole system in the 1960s following the abolition of the death penalty.

His ultimately unsuccessful campaign for the release of Moors murderer Myra Hindley attracted much media and public controversy.

For this work, the Longford Prize is named after him.

It is awarded annually during the Longford Lecture and recognises achievement in the field of penal reform.

As a devout Christian determined to translate faith into action, he was known for his bombastic style and his eccentricity.

Although a shrewd and influential politician, he was also widely unpopular among Labour leaders, particularly for his lack of ministerial ability, and was moved from cabinet post to cabinet post, never serving more than two years at any one ministry.

Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson opined that Longford had the mental capacity of a 12-year-old.

In 1972, he was made a Knight Companion of the Garter.

In the same year, he was appointed to head the group charged with investigating the effects of pornography on society which published the controversial Pornography Report (the Longford Report).

He became known as a campaigner against pornography and held the view that it was degrading to both its users and to those who worked in the trade, especially women.

Longford was also an outspoken critic of the British press, and once said it was "trembling on the brink of obscenity".

Longford was instrumental in decriminalising homosexuality in the United Kingdom, but was always forthright with his strong moral disapproval of homosexual acts on religious grounds.

He opposed furthering gay rights legislation, including the equalisation of the age of consent, and also supported the passage of Section 28.

Born in London to an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family, he was the second son of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford in the Peerage of Ireland.

He was educated at Eton College and New College, Oxford, where as an undergraduate he was a member of the Bullingdon Club.

Despite having failed to be awarded a scholarship, he graduated with a first-class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and became a don at Christ Church.

Longford was politically active until his death in 2001.

A member of an old, landed Anglo-Irish family, the Pakenhams (who became Earls of Longford), he was one of the few aristocratic hereditary peers ever to serve in a senior capacity within a Labour government.

Longford was famed for championing social outcasts and unpopular causes.

He is especially notable for his lifelong advocacy of penal reform.

Longford visited prisons on a regular basis for nearly 70 years until his death.