Reginald Yarnitz Freeson (24 February 1926 – 9 October 2006) was a British Labour politician. He was a Member of Parliament for 23 years, from 1964 to 1987, for Willesden East and later Brent East, with 14 years on the front bench. He became a junior minister in the Ministry of Power in 1967, and then led his party on housing policy for 10 years, from 1969 to 1979, serving as Minister of State for Housing from 1969 to 1970 and then again from 1974 to 1979, and being his party's housing spokesman in the intervening period. He continued as health and social security spokesman until 1981. His soft-left opinions made him vulnerable to the hard left in the early 1980s, and he was deselected in 1985, leaving Parliament at the 1987 general election to be succeeded by hard-leftwinger and future London mayor Ken Livingstone. Early and private life Freeson was born in St Pancras and raised in the Jewish orphanage in West Norwood from the age of 5. His grandparents were Jews who came to the UK to escape the pogroms in Poland and Russia in the 1890s, but he was abandoned by his parents. After a successful school career, he volunteered to join the RAF Volunteer Reserve aged 16, but was posted to the Rifle Brigade for training in 1944 and then passed on to the Royal Engineers in Egypt. He spent some time working for the Inter Services Publications Unit. He worked as a journalist in the Middle East for one year after being demobbed in 1947, and his experiences made him a convinced Zionist. He continued his print career in Fleet Street, where he worked on publications including John Bull, Everybody's Weekly, London Illustrated, News Review, Today, Education, The Daily Mirror and the News Chronicle. He was later an assistant press officer at the Ministry of Works and the British Railways Board. He was married twice. He first married in 1971, but was divorced in 1983. He remarried in 1983, and is survived by his second wife, and a son and daughter from his first marriage. Political career Freeson joined the Labour Party after returning to England in 1948. He became active in local politics, and was elected to Willesden Borough Council in 1952 and became an alderman in 1955. He served as the council leader from 1958 until the post was abolished in 1965. He