A Service of Thanksgiving to celebrate the life and work of The Rt Hon Lord Morris of Manchester AO, QSO

13 November 2012 at 11:00 am

A Service of Thanksgiving to celebrate the life and work of The Rt Hon Lord Morris of Manchester AO, QSO was held in St Margaret’s Church on Tuesday 13th November 2012 at 11.00 am

Alf Morris was born in Manchester on 23rd March 1928. He left school at 14 for the offices of a brewery, before completing National Service with the Army in Egypt. He studied at Ruskin College while working as a garment workers’ union organiser, won a scholarship to St Catherine’s College, Oxford and gained a postgraduate Certificate of Education at Manchester University.

He joined the Labour Party at the age of 16, becoming president of its League of Youth in 1950, and chairing, in 1952, the International Union of Socialist Youth.

He was MP for Manchester Wythenshawe from 1964 to 1997. As a government minister representing disabled people, he introduced new disability allowances and supported injured armed forces personnel. His legislation work led to the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act in 1970, the first act to recognise and give rights to people with disabilities. In 1974, Lord Morris became the world's first Minister for the Disabled.

In 1990, following an appeal to Mrs Thatcher from Prime Minister Bob Hawke, he promoted a Bill enabling the Public Record Office to give Australia a copy of the document that united it as a federation in 1901. The Australia Constitution Act became the centrepiece of a museum in Canberra, and in 1991 Morris received an honorary Australian Order, the country’s senior decoration.

As a trusted senior backbencher, Morris chaired the Parliamentary Pensions Fund, the Commons Members’ Fund and the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. He retired from the Commons in 1997; up to the final weeks he could be seen at the head of mass lobbies, one for haemophiliacs who had contracted HIV through blood transfusions.

In 1997 Lord Morris was made a life peer in recognition of his work.

He is survived by his wife, Irene, whom he married in 1950, and their two sons and two daughters.