Timothy West performed the Tories’ wartime hero Winston Churchill 3 times, but he was a passionate life-long supporter of the Labour Occasion.
Alongside along with his spouse of 60 years and soulmate Prunella Scales, he campaigned for Labour and was one of many get together’s most outstanding showbiz supporters.
It was after Sir Tony Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997 {that a} group of A-list supporters and main get together donors turned often called “luvvies for Labour”.
Extra: Timothy West has died, aged 90
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Timothy West has died aged 90. Pic: Geoff Pugh/Shutterstock
From stage and display screen, they included impresario Sir Cameron Waterproof coat, actors Sinead Cusack and Jeremy Irons, and One Foot In The Grave star Richard Wilson.
West and Scales weren’t listed amongst New Labour’s greatest donors on the time, however they had been cheerleaders for the Blair authorities and had been high-profile activists.
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Prunella Scales and Timothy West in 1998. Pic: PA
In 2000, the couple had been among the many main performers in a glitzy centenary celebration for the Labour Occasion on the Outdated Vic Theatre in London, hosted by the then prime minister.
A capability viewers of get together members attended the occasion, compered by comic and actor Stephen Fry, with Tony Robinson, aka Baldrick in Blackadder, additionally collaborating.
The occasion was to have fun the one hundredth anniversary of the forming of the Labour Illustration Committee in 1900. West spoke in entrance of a large picture of socialist hero Aneurin Bevan, founding father of the NHS.
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Timothy West and Prunella Scales. Pic: Geoff Pugh/Shutterstock
A decided supporter
In a evaluation of West’s autobiography, A Second In direction of The Finish Of The Play, printed in 2001, fellow actor Simon Callow paid tribute to his modesty and humility in his political campaigning.
“He has given unstintingly of his time, though he is too modest to mention it, to the charities and causes in which he believes,” Callow wrote in The Guardian.
“He has been solidly and determinedly supportive of the Labour Party.
“He (and his spouse Prunella Scales) have tirelessly fought the nook of actors; marching, signing petitions, campaigning wherever such issues had been wanted, although by no means pompously or humourlessly.”
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Timothy West’s finest roles
Like father, like son? Kind of
The couple’s actor son Samuel West, who performs the irascible Siegfried Farnon in Channel 5’s All Creatures Nice And Small, additionally turned a political activist, however in contrast to his mother and father was no fan of Sir Tony Blair.
Whereas at Oxford College, he was a member of the far-left Socialist Staff Occasion and later the Socialist Alliance. And he was an outspoken critic of Blair’s New Labour authorities and the Iraq struggle.
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The West performing dynasty lives on, as do “luvvies for Labour”, with actors together with Invoice Nighy, Dame Imelda Staunton, Hugh Bonneville and Keeley Hawes backing Sir Keir Starmer on this 12 months’s election marketing campaign.
However Timothy West will likely be remembered by senior figures from the Blair period as one among New Labour’s most stalwart and dependable showbiz supporters over a few years.
