Prunella Scales wasn’t only a lifelong Labour supporter. She appeared in get together political broadcasts for the get together through the 2005 and 2010 normal elections and was a tireless campaigner.
She referred to as the previous Labour chief Neil Kinnock a “expensive good friend” and, alongside along with her actor husband Timothy West, was a distinguished Labour Get together supporter when Tony Blair was prime minister.
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Scales and West, who died final November, could not have been amongst New Labour’s largest donors on the time, however they had been vocal cheerleaders for the Blair authorities and high-profile activists.
Her activism started a lot earlier. Again in 1977, on the top of her fame taking part in Sybil in Fawlty Towers, she attended the launch of the Anti-Nazi League on the Home of Commons with Kinnock, Peter Hain and different celeb supporters.
Within the Nineteen Eighties, she served on the council of the actors’ union Fairness and carried out at a profit live performance for the wives of putting miners. She additionally supported the Marketing campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
In addition to her activism throughout Kinnock’s management, in 1988 she performed the Queen in Alan Bennett’s play A Query of Attribution, on the Nationwide Theatre, quizzing Anthony Blunt a couple of portray within the royal assortment which will have been a faux.
In response to The Guardian, when she later went to Buckingham Palace to obtain her CBE, the Queen muttered as she handed over the gong: “I suppose you suppose you ought to be up right here doing this.”
And forward of the 1992 normal election, which Kinnock misplaced to John Main, she was quoted warmly praising the Labour chief in an Observer article on the connection between politics and celebrities.
Timothy West and Prunella Scales.
Pic: PA
After Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997, Scales and West had been a part of a gaggle of A-list supporters and main get together donors that turned generally known as “luvvies for Labour”.
The couple had been additionally lively in get together occasions. In 2000, they had been among the many main performers in a glitzy centenary celebration for the Labour Get together on the Previous Vic Theatre in London, hosted by the then prime minister.
A capability viewers of get together members attended the occasion, which was staged to have fun the one centesimal anniversary of the forming of the Labour Illustration Committee in 1900.
Within the 2005 normal election marketing campaign, Scales was the presenter for the get together’s election broadcast, whereas she and others, together with actor Neil Pearson, had been additionally concerned in broadcasts through the 2010 marketing campaign.
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She was a part of a gaggle of celebrities and politicians, together with Mr Blair, who participated in a “Burma Marketing campaign” to boycott the nation in assist of Aung San Suu Kyi in her battle for democracy.
She additionally appeared along with her previous good friend Kinnock at a 2006 occasion for the play “The Woman Of Burma” on the Previous Vic.
Paying tribute to the couple in West’s 2001 autobiography, A Second In direction of The Finish Of The Play, Simon Callow wrote: “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.”
The dynasty lives on, albeit fairly otherwise. 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 not like his dad and mom was no fan of Mr Blair.
Whereas at Oxford College, he was a member of the far-left Socialist Employees Get together and later the Socialist Alliance. He was additionally an outspoken critic of the New Labour authorities and the Iraq conflict.
Prunella Scales, nevertheless, together with Timothy West, was one of many Labour Get together’s most stalwart and dependable showbiz supporters over a few years.
