Terry Fields

Parliamentary career Fields was selected as the Labour Party candidate for Liverpool Broadgreen for the general election in 1983. In line with Militant policy, he promised during his campaign that, if he was elected, he would be "a workers' MP on a worker's wage", a promise he kept by drawing only the equivalent of a fireman's wages and donating the balance of his MP's salary to trade union causes and, according to Doris Heffer, "to the party causes or, frankly, also to the coffers of Militant Tendency." His interventions in Parliament focused on issues unique to Liverpool as well as Central America, unemployment, and the coal mining and maritime transport industries.

On 11 July 1991, Fields was jailed for refusing to pay his poll tax bill of £373. In defence of the court's decision, Labour leader Neil Kinnock said: "Law makers must not be law breakers. I have always made that clear." Fields's sentence was for 60 days, meaning that he retained his seat in the House of Commons, as MPs only automatically lose their seat if they are imprisoned for more than a year. Labour Party members criticised Fields for his militant approach to the poll tax and his failure to support other Labour candidates, in particular Peter Kilfoyle in a by-election for the neighbouring constituency of Liverpool Walton,