Andrew Matthew William Faulds (1 March 1923 – 31 May 2000) was a British actor and politician.
Born in Isoko, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), to missionary parents, Faulds married Bunty Whitfield in 1945. After graduating from the University of Glasgow, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1948 but first came to a wider public recognition playing Jet Morgan in Charles Chilton's radio drama Journey Into Space on the BBC Light Programme.[1]
In 1959, Faulds and his wife played host to Paul Robeson who had travelled to England to appear at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon in Tony Richardson's production of Othello. Robeson was still under severe censure and scrutiny in the USA owing to his socialist convictions and had only recently been allowed to travel abroad again following the confiscation of his passport during the McCarthyist episode. It was during this visit that Robeson inspired Faulds to take up political activism.[1]
In the UK general election, 1964, the Labour Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, had been defeated in controversial circumstances in the Smethwick constituency by Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths. Smethwick had been a focus of immigration from the Commonwealth in the economic and industrial growth of the years following World War II and Griffiths ran a campaign critical of the government's policy. There were rumours that his supporters had covertly circulated the slogan If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour. Faulds defeated Griffiths in the UK general election, 1966 and was Labour Member of Parliament for the constituency until his retirement in 1997. (The constituency was renamed Warley East in 1974.) Smethwick remained the focus of much racial tension in England throughout Faulds' office, in particular following the Rivers of Blood Speech by Enoch Powell in 1968 which Faulds characterised as ... unchristian ... unprincipled, undemocratic and racialist.[1]
There has been speculation that Faulds was denied ministerial office because of his open support of the Palestinian cause.[1]
Faulds maintained his acting career throughout the 1960s and 1970s and, in particular became a key part of film director Ken Russell's repertory company, appearing in, among other films, The Devils (1971), Mahler (1974) and Lisztomania (1975). Notably, he appeared in Russell's film The Music Lovers (1971) alongside Glenda Jackson who was also to go on to become a Labour MP.[1]
One of Faulds' most famous roles is that of Phalerus in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), taking part in the famous skeleton fight scene by Ray Harryhausen, and another was in one of Tony Hancock's best remembered television programmes, unseen but as the voice of 'mayday' in "The Radio Ham" (1961).
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