Richard William Briginshaw

Richard William Briginshaw, Baron Briginshaw (15 May 1908 – 26 March 1992) was a British trade union leader and politician.

Born in Brixton, South London to a working-class family, Briginshaw left school at the age of fourteen to become a printer's devil. While his own family was relatively well off, he was exposed to the poverty of Brixton at the time, and his experiences of knowing children at school without shoes, and often without food, was to colour his political views for the rest of his life.

During his early career, Briginshaw worked as a machine hand for many different newspapers, but also attended night school, studying law and economics and eventually gaining a diploma from University College London. He also became active in the trade union movement, and in 1938 became Assistant secretary of the London branch of the National Society of Operative Printers and Assistants (NATSOPA). His political alliances were often controversial; when the Conservative-supporting Rupert Murdoch and the Labour-supporting Robert Maxwell were vying for control of The Sun newspaper, he angered other union leaders by supporting Murdoch, who he believed would deliver better wages and job security for his members.

After his retirement in 1973, Briginshaw surprised many observers by accepting a life peerage from Harold Wilson, joining the House of Lords and taking the title Baron Briginshaw, of Southwark in Greater London, in January 1975. The following year he published a pamphlet called Abolish the House of Lords, denouncing it as "a worthless anachronism". He died in 1992 in Croydon of a perforated duodenal ulcer and was survived by six children.