Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford

Who was Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford?

Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, KG PC, known to family as Frank Longford, and known as Baron 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, and was a cabinet minister on several occasions between 1947 and 1968. Longford was politically active up until his death in 2001. A member of an old, landed Anglo-Irish family, he was one of the few aristocratic hereditary peers to have ever served in senior capacity within Labour governments, at the time associated with socialism and left-wing politics.

He is notable for his lifelong advocacy of penal reform. Longford visited prisons on a regular basis for nearly 70 years until his death. 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 his tireless work, the Longford Prize of the Prison Reform Trust is named after him.