Blair tribute to ‘courageous’ Woolas, MP and minister who fought antisemitism |
Three British prime ministers – Keir Starmer, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair – joined mourners on Tuesday for the funeral of Phil Woolas, a former MP and UK government minister who as a student leader in the 1980s galvanized solidarity against a wave of campus antisemitism.
Hundreds attended the funeral at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, for Woolas, who died in March from glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, at the age of 66.
Woolas, the former Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth who rose to become immigration minister under Gordon Brown, was widely respected in the Jewish community. He emerged as a staunch defender of Jewish rights as the General Secretary of Manchester University Student Union in the early 1980s.
It was at Manchester that Phil first encountered antisemitism, disguised as anti-Zionism, and resolved to confront it, working closely with what was then the largest student Jewish Society in Europe. He was joined in this firm belief by John Mann (now Lord Mann of Holbeck Moor), a fellow Labour student who became a life-long friend and political ally. Lord Mann later became the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism and is now the UK Government’s independent adviser on antisemitism.
“Forty-eight years ago, we were forming a football team and I asked him whether he was any good,” Lord Mann told the mourners on Tuesday. “He gave that little half smile of his and replied, ‘I am Mario Kempes’,” a World Cup-winning Argentinian footballer regarded as one of the best players of all time.
“He could paint pictures with his words and weave them into others’ minds,” Lord Mann said. “He could wear your shoes and see your world. There are many different kinds of politicians. Phil never once saw himself as better than anyone else. Never, ever, first amongst equals – rather as one of a thousand flowers blooming together into a tapestry of wonder.”
“If old Mrs. Smith contacted him, anguishing about her windows that needed fixing, he would go round, knock on the door, and see the world as she saw it, put himself in her armchair and see her view,” Mann said. “What was minor to everyone else was major to Mrs. Smith.”
“After he took on and beat the antisemites banning Jewish societies in student unions all those decades ago, he kept that understanding of how you build alliances with people not inside your immediate comfort zone,” he said.
Phil and John first visited Israel and the West Bank in 1984, shortly after Phil’s election as President of the National Union of Students, where they met Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, and some government officials. They were the first NUS delegation for some years to make the trip, which prompted criticism from both sides. Arriving at Ben Gurion Airport, the pair were treated like any other young British men with jeans and rucksacks. Asked what they were planning to do in Israel, Phil responded “We’re here to see Mr Peres.” They were promptly bundled into a room containing silent men with large guns – until a few minutes later an official returned rather sheepishly to confirm that they were indeed due to meet the Israeli Prime Minister – at which point they suddenly became, and were treated as, visiting VIPs.
In 1985, Sunderland Polytechnic banned its Jewish Society for being “Zionist.” Phil threw the weight of NUS behind a national campaign spearheaded by the Union of Jewish Students to get the ban overturned, and travelled to Sunderland to address an emergency rally alongside UJS Chairman Simon Myerson. When the Sunderland Polytechnic Student Union continued the ban, offering instead a humiliating compromise, Phil quietly encouraged Jewish student leaders to keep fighting for a complete rejection of any interference in the work of the Jewish Society. Phil was instrumental in shepherding a vote through NUS Conference that year demanding the reinstatement of the Polytechnic Jewish Society, which finally occurred in October. At the same time, he encouraged the candidacy of Linzi Brand, the first official UJS representative ever elected to the NUS Executive. Phil’s firm stance rallied the NUS leadership and sent a strong signal to other student unions throughout Britain where Jewish societies faced similar attempts to curtail their activities.
Jewish students were able to thank him in person later that year when Phil made history by becoming the first NUS President to address UJS annual conference. He continued to work closely with UJS to protect Jewish student rights, which were frequently under attack from extreme Trotskyist and anti-Zionist groups and even mainstream members of Phil’s own National Organization of Labour Students.
“He was courageous, he was an innovator, and he was a motivator,” the congregation heard from Tony Blair, who became prime minister in 1997 in the landslide that first won Woolas his parliamentary seat.
“Phil was a major part of the fightback in the Labour Party which allowed it to come back from the abyss over which it was poised for much of the 1970s and early 80s,” Blair recalled. “I remember he and John Mann publishing a pamphlet back in 1986 called Labor and Youth, the Missing Generation, which essentially took apart the delusionary socialism of the far Left and their belief that Britain’s young would be influenced by, as they called it, a lot of dead Russians. It was never clear to me which he disliked most – the Trots or those who believe Trots were good people but just misguided.”
Phil liked to recall that many right-wing students at the time were also causing him problems, urging their unions to disaffiliate from NUS. Defending NUS at a debate in the undergraduate club at Peterhouse, the notoriously conservative (then) single-sex Cambridge college, Phil was interrupted by the entry of the rowing club hearties, whose leader started heckling the “pinko socialist.”
“You do realize,” Phil replied, “that if you disaffiliate from NUS you’ll lose your subsidized beer?” The reaction was immediate: “Lose our cheap beer? Who proposed this bloody motion? All those against?” There was a show of hands. “Motion defeated! Back to the bar!”
John Healey, the British Defense Secretary, told the congregation he had entered parliament and then government the same year as Phil, and they had become close friends.
“Everyone knew someone who’d been helped by Phil,” Healey said. “When he collapsed in a coma last year, he was rushed to Royal Oldham Hospital. The consultant in charge of the ICU was a local lad that Phil had helped get a bursary at the start of his medical studies 20 years before.”
The tributes from political leaders were followed by eulogies from Phil’s sons, who brought the congregation to laughter and tears with their memories of growing up with a father who was, in the words of Josh, the eldest, “the most exciting person I’ve ever met.”
Phil’s support for a secure, peaceful, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and for the rights of the UK Jewish community, continued throughout his life. After his term at NUS, he began a career in communications, becoming a TV producer and GMB union communications officer. As a government minister, Phil was instrumental in securing the first government funding for the Community Security Trust (CST) which helps protect the UK Jewish community, largely through dedicated volunteers.
I had the pleasure of first meeting Phil when he was at Manchester University and I was about to become the Chairperson of the Union of Jewish Students. We worked closely together on student issues and became friends. The last time I saw him was in 2023, shortly before he was incapacitated by his final illness, when he visited Israel for the OurCrowd Global Investor Summit, a high-tech conference, where I was the compere. We were delighted to host him for dinner at our home in Jerusalem, just as we had during his first visit to the country in 1984.
Phil is survived by his wife Tracey, his sons Josh and Jed and their partners, and his first grandchild Callan, born in January.
Phil Woolas: Born December 11, 1959. Died: March 14, 2026