Fred Mulley

Frederick William Mulley, Baron Mulley, PC (3 July 1918 – 15 March 1995) was a British Labour Party politician, barrister-at-law and economist.

Mulley was born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, the son of William Mulley, a general labourer from The Fens, and his wife Mary (née Boiles), a domestic servant.

He attended Warwick School on a scholarship between 1929 and 1936, leaving with the higher school certificate.

As his father, who by this time was unemployed, could not afford to support him through university, Mulley instead became an accounts clerk under the national health insurance scheme.

Mulley had been a member of the Labour Party and the National Association of Clerks and Administrative Workers since 1936, and at the 1945 general election he unsuccessfully contested the constituency of Sutton Coldfield.

He served in the Worcestershire Regiment during the Second World War, reaching the rank of sergeant, but was captured in 1940 and spent five years as a prisoner of war in Germany.

During this time he obtained a BSc in economics from the University of London as an external student and became a chartered secretary.

At the end of the war, Mulley received an adult scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a first-class degree in politics, philosophy and economics in 1947.

After a brief spell as an economics fellow at St Catharine's College, Cambridge (1948–50), he trained as a barrister, being called to the Bar in 1954.

He became Member of Parliament for Sheffield Park in 1950, a position he held until deselected by his local party prior to the 1983 general election, when his constituency disappeared in a redistribution of boundaries.

During a long career in politics Mulley held many ministerial positions, including Minister of Aviation (1965–67), Minister for Disarmament (1967–69), and Minister of Transport (1969–70, 1974–75).

While at the Transport Ministry he believed it would be inappropriate to be seen to be a car driver; thus, although he owned an Austin Maxi, his wife was the sole user of it during this period.

In 1975 Harold Wilson brought him into the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science, and in 1976 became Secretary of State for Defence.

He fell asleep during the Queen's Jubilee Review of the Royal Air Force at RAF Finningley in 1977 when there was considerable noise around him.

Having a small sleep during exercise was referred to by members of the RAF as having a "Fred Mulley".

It was suggested in Private Eye that Mulley was guilty of treason (then still a capital offence) for having slept with the Queen.

Writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, former Cabinet minister Edmund Dell argued that Mulley was both a party loyalist of "unassailable" working-class credentials and a genuine Oxbridge intellectual, an unusual combination that made him valuable to Wilson and to Wilson's successor, James Callaghan.

After retiring from the House of Commons in 1983, he was created a life peer as Baron Mulley, of Manor Park in the City of Sheffield on 30 January 1984, and he held a variety of directorial positions.

A main road in the Lower Don Valley in Sheffield is named after him.