After twelve years at the Bank, he took advantage of its generous pension scheme and left in 1935, and began to work as a Company Secretary.
He was less popular among individual members of the Labour Party, and when the LCC was abolished, he was selected as a candidate for the new Greater London Council in Havering, which was marginal.
He fought the 1964 elections on traditional lines, campaigning on the record of the LCC in building new council housing which was regarded as good quality at the time.
Despite predictions that the wider boundaries of the GLC would hand power to the Conservatives, Fiske was returned in his own seat and Labour won a comfortable victory.
Fiske carried out a policy of subsidies for the arts, and it was under his leadership that the decision was made to build the Royal National Theatre on the South Bank site.
[4] He had already been handed a lifeline by Chancellor of the Exchequer James Callaghan who, thinking of his Bank of England experience, appointed him Chairman of the Decimal Currency Board on 12 December 1966.
Fiske led an ambitious public campaign in the years leading up to the switch, trying to make sure every business and every consumer was aware of the implications.
In the event, despite some predictions of disaster, D day went off smoothly, with the main concerns being over retailers using the opportunity to round prices up and thereby boost inflation.