Though born in Ilford, he was brought up in the Belle Vue area of Bradford, Yorkshire, where he attended primary and secondary school. Between 1935-39 he was a manual labourer, an office boy and was unemployed for a while.
At the 1945 general election, he stood unsuccessfully at the Pembrokeshire constituency in Wales, losing by only 168 votes to the Liberal Party candidate Gwilym Lloyd George. After demobilisation, he became full-time Assistant Secretary of the Civil Service Clerical Association, a trade union. In 1947, he joined the Labour Party Research Department, and was for four years the secretary of the party's policy committee, which involved him in drafting various articles of party policy during this period. At the 1951 general election, Fienburgh was elected as the Member of Parliament for the Labour seat of Islington North, in North London, although at the time of his death, he was actually living in Hemel Hempstead. Percy Lucas, a friend and fellow MP, mentioned in his memoir Five Up that Fienburgh also had a burgeoning media career with both Granada Television and the Sunday Express. Modern commentators have varying viewpoints on Fienburgh's character. He was described by Anthony Howard in The Times of 7 November 2000 as being "rather louche", and Denis Healey in his autobiography The Time of My Life asserts that Fienburgh's "good looks and big brown eyes often led him astray". Edward Pearce, writing in The Guardian described him as a "delightful and amusing Labour politician". Peter Hitchens in his book The Abolition of Britain described him as "one of the most talented men on the party's Left". Fienburgh was allegedly involved in an altercation with Jennie Lee during the 1952 Labour Party conference, according to Lee's biographer Patricia Hollis. Wilfred Fienburgh represented Islington North until his death in a car crash in 1958, aged 38. At the resulting by-election, the seat was retained for Labour by Gerry Reynolds with an increased majority.
Writer
Fienburgh wrote several books including non-fiction works such as Steel Is Power - The Case for Nationalisation and 25 Momentous Years: A 25th Anniversary in the History of the Daily Herald. His best remembered book is a posthumously-published novel, No Love For Johnnie, a cynical portrayal of British politics in the late 1950s which was later adapted into a film starring Peter Finch as the title character. The novel seems to give vent to Fienburgh's deep-seated concerns about corruption in politics - he had previously claimed in 1955 that "the Labour party is the only party in Britain in which you can buy a seat", according to author Michael Rush in The Selection of Parliamentary Candidates. One near-contemporary critic writing in the New Left Review of 1961 considered it a "bad novel" and that "Fienburgh seems to have had no conception of what idealism means". Author Derek Jewell, writing in 1967, called it "a bitter study of political life". Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The Observer in 2001 saw No Love for Johnnie as the archetype novel of a genre that he names "the Labour Party novel of disillusionment". Paul Routledge in the New Statesman in 2000 described the novel as being highly prescient of the New Labour movement.
Personal life
In 1940 Fienburgh married Joan Valerie Hudson McDowell, daughter of Captain Thomas McDowell of Belfast. The couple had two sons and two daughters. Fienburgh died aged 38 when the car he was driving collided with a lamppost at Mill Hill, London on 3 February 1958. His funeral took place on 7 February at Golders Green Crematorium. He left £6,177 in his will, according to The Times report of 8 May 1958. According to The Library Association Record Fienburgh's widow Joan was invited to open a new Islington public library in July 1960 as an official mark of respect for her late husband. MP Bob Mellish collected a sum of £400 from fellow MPs to give to Joan Fienburgh. Joan remarried in 1975, and died in 1991.
