A foreign policy spokesman of the British Labour Party, Gerald Bernard Kaufman (born 1930) became a member of Parliament in 1970.

Gerald Kaufman was born on June 21, 1930, and was the son of Louis and Jane Kaufman. As a Yorkshireman, he was educated in Leeds, an important textile and commercial center in the north of England, at city "council" schools in the primary grades and at Leeds Grammar School (high school). He went on to undergraduate education at Queen's College, Oxford.

His first real political job was assistant general secretary of the Fabian Society, which was the nucleus of British socialist intelligentsia. Kaufman only held this job for a year (1954-1955) and was pleased at obtaining the job as a journalist on the political staff of a popular newspaper, the Daily Mirror, for the next nine years (1955-1964). He moved to the New Statesmen in 1964-1965, in preparation for his five-year...