Born in Brixton, South London to a working-class family, Briginshaw left school at the age of fourteen to become a printer's devil.
While his own family was relatively well off, he was exposed to the poverty of Brixton at the time, and his experiences of knowing children at school without shoes, and often without food, was to colour his political views for the rest of his life.
[1] During his early career, Briginshaw worked as a machine hand for many different newspapers, but also attended night school, studying law and economics and eventually gaining a diploma from University College London.
While he was firmly on the left of the party, he now enjoyed a rapid rise in his trade union, and in 1951 he became General Secretary of NATSOPA; a post he would hold for the next twenty-three years.
[1] He was a strong opponent of Britain's membership of the European Economic Community, denouncing the day Britain joined as "the blackest day in the calendar of [its] history"[3] After his retirement in 1973, Briginshaw surprised many observers by accepting a life peerage from Harold Wilson, joining the House of Lords and taking the title Baron Briginshaw, of Southwark in Greater London, in January 1975.