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Dr Leslie Huckfield

Leslie Huckfield

Profile summary

  • Honorary Associate
  • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
  • School of Social Sciences & Global Studies
  • Economics

Web links

Professional biography

Leslie Huckfield is an Associate Lecturer and Honorary Research Associate at the Open University, specialising in European Union matters and a Visiting Fellow and researcher at Glasgow Caledonian University, supervising doctoral students.

He was a Member of the House of Commons from 1967 till 1983 and a Member of the European Parliament from 1984 till 1989, where he was a member of the Socialists and Democrats Group and Vice Chair of the Parliament’s Transport Committee. He is active in the European Parliament Former Members Association.

He was Under Secretary of State (a Government Minister) in the Department of Industry from 1976 till 1979 and a member of the Labour Party National Executive Committee from 1978 till 1982. In 1980 he was chair of the Labour NEC Working Group on Workers’ Cooperatives which made recommendations for Labour’s 1983 General Election Manifesto.

His academic qualifications include an Oxford MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, an MSc with Distinction in Urban and Regional Planning from Heriot Watt University and a PhD from Glasgow Caledonian University.

Alongside his academic qualifications, Leslie Huckfield has a range of UK, European and international policy development and implementation experience.  

Since his Membership of the European Parliament, he has worked on European Union funding for colleges, universities, the third sector and trade unions in Merseyside, the West Midlands and Scotland.

From 1997 when he moved to the West Midlands, his external activities have included external funding, project management, seminars and conferences in and for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Venezuela, the Caribbean and Ghana.

He was also an Associate of West Midlands in Europe Office in Brussels. In 2015 and 2016 he delivered a series of 11 European Funding Masterclass across Scotland, attended by 500 representatives from Scotland’s social enterprises and community organisations.

Research interests

The European Union: An Alternative Version. Despite increasing opinion poll results favouring UK re-entry, the European Union is not what it seems.

Though many recent UK Government policy developments represent a softening up process for the UK’s re-joining the EU, constantly paraded and heralded by UK and European politicians, media, academics and think tanks as a “good thing”, there has been no real democratic debate.

Many within the European Union will welcome a UK return because of its NATO commitment and increasing level of defence spending, and because the French, German and Italian economies as the previous drivers of European growth – are all faltering in different ways. Even some of the appealing features of the UK’s previous EU membership, including its receipts from European Social Fund and European Regional Development Fund are now actively being subverted towards defence spending.

The election of Central and Eastern European Heads of State, including Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Romania have become critical to the whole EU project.  These background and differences are not widely understood or reported. For them, this extension of EU liberalism and the effective exclusion of economic policy from their national democratic processes has eroded any rationalist foundations of liberal policies.

Selected publications

  • “Social Enterprise Policy Development in Scotland and Ireland” (pending). Joint Article with Dublin City University and Technological University Dublin for Irish Journal of Public Administration
  • “La financiarisation britannique de la prestation de services publics: U.K. Financialization of Public Service Delivery Goes Global”  Special Edition Vol. 13 No. S1 (2022): “At the Crossroads of Possibilities: Innovations Against Social, Environmental, and Epistemic Injustices”. Canadian Journal of Nonprofit and Social Economy Research Revue canadienne de re­cherche sur les OSBL et l’économie sociale
  • “How Blair Killed the Coops”. Manchester University Press book. Published November 2021
  • “The financialization of community development: the role of social finance”  Community Development Journal, Volume 56, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 100–11
  • “The Mythology of the Social Impact Bond: A Critical Assessment from a Concerned Observer” Historische Sozialforschung (Historical Social Research) Journal. Published May 2020.
  • Social Finance and Local Government Services (Social Investment and Social Impact Bonds). Research project for trade union UNISON, completed December 2019
  • “Policy for Cooperatives”. Shadow Chancellor’s Implementation Group on doubling UK cooperative sector. Member since September 2018. Report submitted June 2019
  • “How can we Stop Privatisation of Public Services?” Chapter in “Rethinking Britain: Policy Ideas for the Many”, Policy Press, Bristol. Published March 2019  
  • “Le néolibéralisme et la marchandisation de l’économie sociale au Royaume-Uni: les conséquences pour l’innovation sociale” Chapter in “Trajectoires d'Innovation” Presses de l'Université du Québec, March 2019.
  • “Social Innovation as a Trigger for Transformations: The Role of Research”. Expert submission August 2017. Edited: Frank Moulaert, Abid Mehmood, Diana MacCallum, and Bernhard Leubolt. EU Commission Directorate General for Research and Innovation, September 2017.
  • “Alternative Models of Ownership. Contributor to Report to Shadow Chancellor and Shadow Secretary of State for BEIS, published by Labour Party, May 2017
  • “Social Enterprise Came before New Labour: Neglect of UK Antecedents from the 1970s onwards has Miscast the Role of Social Enterprise.” Paper to Voluntary Action History Soc Conf, Liverpool, July 2016

Teaching interests

DD226 Economics in Practice