Gerald Kaufman was born in Leeds, 21 June 1930, the son of Louis and Jane Kaufman. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and Queen's College, Oxford, 1950-3.

He was Assistant General Secretary of the Fabian Society, 1954-5, and then worked as a political journalist on the Daily Mirror, 1955-64, and the New Statesman, 1964-5. He became Parliamentary Press Liaison Officer for the Labour Party, 1965-70.

He contested elections in Bromley, 1955, and Gillingham, 1959, before being elected Labour Member of Parliament for Manchester Ardwick, 1970-83, and subsequently Manchester Gorton, 1983-. He was a Minister in the Department of the Environment, 1974-5, and the Department of Industry, 1975-9. In Opposition, he was Shadow Environment Secretary, 1980-3; Shadow Home Secretary, 1983-7; and Shadow Foreign Secretary, 1987-92. He chaired the Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport [formerly the Select Committee on National Heritage], 1992-2005; and was a member of the Parliamentary Committee of the Parliamentary Labour Party, 1980-92, of the Labour Party National Executive Committee, 1991-2. and of the Royal Commission on House of Lords Reform, 1999. He was also Chairman of the Booker Prize Judges, 1999.

He was awarded a knighthood in 2004 and died on 26 February 2017.

His publications include: "How to Live Under Labour" (1964); editor, "The Left" (1966); "To Build the Promised Land" (1973); "How to be a Minister" (1980); editor, "Renewal: Labour's Britain in the 1980s" (1983); "My Life in the Silver Screen" (1985); "Inside the Promised Land" (1986); "Meet Me in St Louis" (1994). He also wrote scripts for the television show "That Was The Week That Was" in the 1960s.