Our Friends in the North-East

The most reported episode at the 2002 Labour Party Conference was the tour of Blackpool made by ex-President Clinton and film star Kevin Spacey. Given the status and photogenic nature of the individuals concerned this was hardly surprising. Little was said in the media, though, about the duos’ grand entrance, accompanied by the Prime Minister and his wife, at the Labour Party Northern Social, always one of the better organised and attended events at the week long conference. Held in the main ballroom within the Winter Gardens, a noticeable feature of this episode, observed by the author, was an immediate evacuation of the bar area and a packing of the zone around the stage. Spacey obliged the crowd with an impersonation of Clinton………(audience hilarity)……….Blair gushed and beamed….Clinton joked ……..(much audience laughter) ….Clinton then moved into statesman mode, telling the crowd:

‘…..I really want to thank the Northern Labour Party for giving Tony Blair to the world. You have really done a wonderful thing….’ ( great applause )

From the stage Blair then thanked the Labour Party agent in Sedgefield, his constituency:

‘….for the time you took to talk to me and the help you gave me when we I met you all those years ago….’

The Prime Minister, his wife, Clinton and Spacey then departed amidst much hand shaking and applause after which the assembled delegates enjoyed an evening of live music from Bad Company.

Much of this was unremarkable. The Labour Party always has overseas visitors at Conference. Some of them are ex-Presidents – Nelson Mandela for instance. Celebrities have occasionally dropped by. But it is instructive to think back just a few years. Would we have seen, say LBJ and Robert Redford in the same venue – Blackpool – in 1972, perhaps being introduced by that years Conference Chair, Tony Benn? Perhaps the episode represents a good illustration of how Americanised, or how celebrity obsessed (or both) British politics has become in recent years. An alternative view would be that the little speeches made from the stage by Blair and Clinton were their way of acknowledging and thanking a powerful and influential section of the Labour Party in the the North East of England for the support they have given centre right, pro-US, Labour Party figures over a long period of time.

An examination of this seems appropriate.

The notion that a highly organised cabal runs regional politics in parts of Northern England is hardly new. A considerable amount of print was once devoted to John Poulson, a big time architect in the 1960s, who bribed local politicians and officials to obtain contracts. Much of this was said to have taken place in the North East. Twenty-five years later a number of commentators have remarked on the influence and power in the Blair government wielded by MPs representing seats in the North East: Blair himself, Peter Mandelson, Stephen Byers Alan Milburn, Nick Brown, Hilary Armstrong, Marjorie (‘Mo’) Mowlam and David Miliband being good examples. There would seem to be some connections here that might be worth tracing or making between the current Labour Party leadership and the power brokers in this part of the UK.

Beginnings

The birth of the Labour movement in the North East can be traced to the founding of the Tyneside and General Labourers Union in 1889. In 1924 this body amalgamated with the National Union of General Workers to form the National Union of General and Municipal Workers (NUGMW), later acronyms of which have been the GMWU and, now following various other amalgamations and regroupings, the GMB. Since its earliest days the union has been a very solid supporter of the Labour Party. As was the custom at that time, a number of its early General Secretaries pursued their own significant political careers. Will Thorne (General Secretary 1924-1934) was Labour MP for West Ham (South) 1906-1945; Tom Williamson (General Secretary 1946-1962) sat on Liverpool City Council 1929-1935 and was MP for Brigg 1945-1948; and John Cooper (General Secretary 1962-1972) was a member of Manchester City Council in 1936, the London County Council in 1949 and sat as MP for Deptford 1950-1951. None of these individuals either came from or represented the North East, and their successors David Basnett (General Secretary 1972-1986) and John Edmonds (General Secretary 1986-2003) were, respectively, a union official from Liverpool and a university graduate who chose to pursue a career through the trade union movement. In Parliament the GMB and its predecessors – throughout much of this period one of several big unions in Britain – usually sponsored between 4 and 10 MPs. On the face of it this is hardly evidence of an overwhelming lobby and we may assume that the low numbers involved indicate that any concerted effort to establish a centre right-North East-GMB relationship came relatively recently.(1) However a closer analysis shows a somewhat higher level of support and/or influence. In 1970, for instance, the union officially endorsed 12 candidates who were successfully elected. But a much larger number (22 – the 12 endorsed and supported candidates plus 10 others) were members of the union. The names at this time make for interesting reading:

• Ernest Perry (Battersea South)
• Brian Walden (Birmingham All Saints)
• James Boyden (Bishop Auckland)
• Michael Cocks (Bristol South)
• John Gilbert (Dudley)
• Ernest Armstrong (Durham North West)
• Frank Tomney (Hammersmith North)
• Bruce Douglas-Mann (Kensington North)
• James Johnson (Hull West)
• Merlyn Rees (Leeds South)
• Dick Taverne (Lincoln)
• Walter Alldritt (Liverpool Scotland)
• Robert Brown (Newcastle-upon-Tyne West)
• John Fraser (Lambeth Norwood)
• Michael English (Nottingham West)
• Frank Judd (Portsmouth West)
• David Reed (Sedgefield)
• Patrick Duffy (Sheffield Attercliffe)
• Jack Ashley (Stoke-on-Trent South)
• Arthur Lewis (West Ham North)
• Jack Cunningham (Whitehaven)

This is the centre and right of the Labour Party during that period: Taverne and Walden were both keen Gaitskellites with Taverne going on to join the SDP, to which Douglas-Mann defected in 1981.

Added to this list, though, should be two further groups: MPs with seats in the North East where the support of the GMB union was essential even if the candidate were not actually a member of the union or endorsed by it; and MPs with a North East background who were not necessarily members of the union but who had been recommended by it as suitable candidates elsewhere. The most prominent of these were:

• Albert Booth (Barrow in Furness) – background in local government in the North East.
• John Horam (Gateshead West) – defected to the SDP 1981.
• Ted Short (Newcastle-upon-Tyne Central) – leader of Newcastle City Council through the 1950s and 60s during the years of Poulson’s alleged influence in that area.
• William Rodgers (Stockton-upon-Tees) – Gaitskellite who co-founded the SDP in 1981.
• Fred Peart (Workington) – background in local government in the North East.

The success of Cunningham Jnr (Jack), Booth and Peart in obtaining seats on the other side of the Pennines from the North East is striking. The account of how Jack Cunningham obtained Whitehaven is legendary: his father, Andrew Cunningham, was GMB boss in the North East, Chair of the Labour Party Northern Region and an Alderman in local government. He arranged the selection for his son who was an official for the same union and a councillor on the same council. These arrangements were only slightly dented by the events leading up to the conviction and imprisonment of Cunningham Snr, Poulson and T. Dan Smith (a Councillor on Newcastle City Council 1950-1966 and Chair of the Northern Economic Planning Council 1965-1970) on corruption and fraud charges in April 1974. (2)

Enter Eddie

Eddie Milne (Labour MP for Blyth Valley 1960-1974), who had criticised Cunningham et al for many years, found himself suddenly deselected by his constituency party prior to the February 1974 general election and quickly replaced as the Labour candidate by Ivor Richard QC, MP for Barons Court, in London, a seat that was being abolished by a boundary review. Interestingly Richard’s old seat directly adjoined the Hammersmith constituency of Frank Tomney, a GMB-sponsored MP. Milne refused to give way, fought the February 1974 election as an Independent Labour candidate, was duly expelled from the Labour Party, but successfully held the seat. (3) The criminal convictions of Cunningham Snr, Poulson and T. Dan Smith came two months later. Milne eventually lost his position in the October 1974 general election to John Ryman, a fox-hunting barrister who sat as Labour MP for the area until 1987, and subsequently published an account of his experience of regional and local politics in the North East, No Shining Armour. In this he attributed the rise to power of the GMB machine to the relative decline of other unions, in particular the National Union of Mineworkers. The book contains many stories about this period including the interesting snippet that the Labour Party took a decision to give Dick Taverne (a GMB-sponsored MP who had gone Independent) a relatively easy ride at the bye-election he caused in Lincoln, whilst making a priority of supporting Giles Radice (Head of Research at the GMB) at the simultaneous contest at Chester-le-Street.(4)

Following the Poulson-Cunningham-Smith debacle the more interesting additions to the GMB/North East stable included Ian Wrigglesworth (MP for Stockton South 1974-1987) (5) and Mike Thomas (MP for Newcastle-upon-Tyne East 1974-1983) both of whom defected to the SDP in 1981. The existence of a working relationship between the Gaitskellites, the GMB and various Cold War era alignments and campaigns in which safe Labour seats in the North East were available for selected individuals seems likely. (6)The contribution of the SDP – in which Rodgers, Horam, Thomas and Wrigglesworth were prominent members – to British society was to keep Thatcher in power after 1981 by dividing the vote against her in 1983 and 1987. The impact this had on UK manufacturing and municipal government (the core of the GMB membership) indicates that the union backed a number of personalities whose actions were completely counter productive to its ostensible objectives.

The reconstruction of the Labour Party after these events and the long march back to power followed. During this time (the mid 1980s onward) the GMB emerged as the second biggest union – after the TGWU – in Britain and significantly increased the number of MPs it sponsored. The current list of those directly connected in some way to the union appears to be as follows:

• Graham Allen – Labour Party Research Officer 1978, employed at GLC 1983, GMB Research Officer 1986, MP for Nottingham North 1992.
• Hilary Armstrong – followed her father (Ernest Armstrong) as MP for Durham North West 1987, a rare example of a dynastic succession in British politics.
• Stuart Bell – defeated candidate in Hexham 1979, Newcastle City Council 1980, MP for Middlesborough since 1983, author of When Salem came to the Boro – the true story of the Cleveland child abuse crisis (7)and Where Jenkins went wrong.
• Nick Brown – GMB official 1978, MP for Newcastle-upon-Tyne East and Wallsend 1983.
• Jack Cunningham – Son of Andrew Cunningham, MP for Whitehaven since 1970.
• Andrew Dismore – employed at GMB 1976, Westminster City Council 1982, MP for Hendon 1997.
• Caroline Flint – employed at GLC 1983, National Union of Students 1988, Lambeth Council 1989, Researcher and Political Officer GMB 1994, MP for Don Valley 1997.
• Roger Godsiff – political officer APEX 1970, Lewisham council 1971, defeated at Birmingham Yardley 1983, Senior Research Officer GMB 1990, MP for Birmingham Small Heath 1992.
• Doug Henderson – research officer and then Regional Organiser GMB from 1973, MP Newcastle North 1987.
• Kevan Jones – post graduate studies at University of Maine, Political Officer and Regional Organiser GMB 1989, Newcastle City Council 1990, Chair Regional Labour Party, MP Durham North (replacing Giles Radice) 2001.
• Brian Jenkins – Tamworth Borough Council 1985, contested seat 1992, MP for Tamworth 1997.
• Oona King – postgraduate studies at the University of California, PA to Glyn Ford MEP 1991, member of John Smith Leadership campaign team 1992, PA to Glenys Kinnock MEP 1994, GMB Press Officer 1995, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow 1997.
• Sally Keeble – daughter of British Ambassador to Soviet Union, Labour Party Press Officer 1983, worked for ILEA 1984, Head of Communications GMB 1986, Councillor in London Borough of Southwark 1986, MP for Northampton North 1997.
• Martin O’Neill – MP for Ochil 1979.
• Dan Norris – defeated candidate at Northavon 1987, member of Bristol City Council 1989, Avon County Council 1994, MP for Wansdyke 1997.
• Peter Pike – councillor on Merton and Mitcham Urban District Council 1962, Burnley Borough Council and GMB Shop Steward 1976, MP for Burnley 1983.
• Clive Soley – councillor in Hammersmith and Fulham 1974, MP for Hammersmith 1979 (succeeding Frank Tomney).
• Dari Taylor – councillor Sunderland City Council 1986, Regional Education Officer for GMB 1990, MP for Stockton South 1997.
• Phil Woolas – president National Union of Students 1984, Head of Communications GMB 1991, MP Oldham East and Saddleworth 1997. (8)
• David Winnick – APEX-GMB Branch Secretary 1956, member Willesden Borough Council 1959, London Borough of Brent 1964, MP Croydon South 1966 (defeated 1970), MP Walsall North 1979.

As with the 1970 list this remains very much a cross section of the centre and centre-right of the current Labour Party. Somewhat differently, though, the schedule of those who are not actually GMB members – as far as this study can tell – but who represent seats where the support of the union is important is now extremely significant:

• Tony Blair – MP for Sedgefield 1983, Leader of the Labour Party 1994, Prime Minister 1997.
• Stephen Byers – Councillor North Tyneside 1980, MP North Tyneside 1992.
• Peter Mandelson – Councillor London Borough of Lambeth 1979, Head of Communications Labour Party 1985, MP Hartlepool 1992.
• Alan Milburn – MP for Darlington 1992.
• David Miliband – Postgraduate studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) 1989, head of policy in Blair’s office 1994, head of Blair’s office 1998, MP for South Shields 2001. (9)

An extremely significant grouping

At one point in the very recent past Blair, Byers, Mandelson, Milburn, Hilary Armstrong and Nick Brown were cabinet colleagues, Jack Cunningham was responsible for co-ordinating and presenting government business, and Clive Soley was Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party with the job of interviewing and vetting all new applicants for the Labour Party Parliamentary Panel. This was an extremely significant grouping exercising great power in contemporary Britain.

But is this organised? Is it a conspiracy? The firm way in which some GMB-endorsed candidates have slotted into various seats in the North East – Hilary Armstrong, Nick Brown, Doug Henderson, Kevan Jones etc – would indicate that it is. On the other hand the steps that led to Blair getting Sedgefield cast doubt on this. In 1970 Sedgefield elected David Reed, a GMB-sponsored candidate, as its MP. He was 25 years old and a public relations officer with Vickers Ltd. In 1974 the Boundary Commission abolished the seat and Reed disappeared from British politics. In 1981 it was announced by another Boundary Commission that the Sedgefield seat would be reinstated. Around this time Blair, a junior barrister living in Hackney, was thinking of putting himself forward for election to Hackney council. He chose not to pursue this, (10) standing instead as the Labour candidate at a by-election in Beaconsfield in May 1982. Fortunately for him, the newly reconstituted Sedgefield Constituency Labour Party selected their candidate late in the day. Blair was able to present himself to them, accurately, as a Labour Party lawyer who had done some work representing trade unions, who had the backing of the TGWU, and who had stood at a Parliamentary bye-election only a little while previously. He was selected and then elected to Parliament. It would be fair to conclude that this sequence of events is most unlikely to have been prearranged.(11)A corrective to this, though, must surely be the sequence of events that led to David Miliband becoming MP for South Shields in 2000. Miliband – press reports and gossip described him as a ‘genius’ – was highly regarded by Blair and ran the Prime Minister’s office after 1998. For reasons that are not immediately apparent, it was thought better to have him in the House of Commons than outside; an MP in Tyneside, David Clark, was promptly given a peerage; it was then conveniently too late in the day for a proper selection process; and Miliband got slotted in. A better example of something being stage-managed, or of 18th century patronage – Lord North style – could scarcely be envisaged. Although the attractions of this to the permanent Westminster political class are clear quite, why the GMB or any other trade union or the local Labour Party membership would accept such a process is baffling.

A federal structure

Perhaps the key to understanding the GMB’s position lies in the fact that it operates as a federal body. The regional and local components have considerable powers and funds to follow their own course and agenda politically provided it lies within the general remit of ensuring the existence of a strong and electable Labour Party. Thus in recent years the General Secretary, John Edmonds, could publicly rail against New Labour policies whilst the GMB northern region provided the Blairite core with safe Parliamentary seats.(12)Many of the MPs either endorsed by, or members of, the GMB union seem straightforward enough in their background and ambitions. They look very much like trade union nominees of an earlier era. Curiously though – given the debate about trade union influence declining under Thatcher and Blair – there are now more union sponsored MPs than there were in either the Attlee or Wilson eras. But what do the GMB (and other unions) get out of this? Why do they do it? The Labour Party Conference at Bournemouth in 2003 staged a lunch time fringe meeting at which the leaders of the AEEU, ISTM , GMB and TGWU unions spoke about the need for a strongly European set of policies for those working in the public sector and industry – i.e. statutory consultation, statutory child-care rights, increased pensions, investment in British industry against the Brown/Blair policy of allowing firms to relocate to India, the Philippines etc. There were no government spokespersons – or MPs of any description – at the meeting to either endorse, dispute or reply to the points raised. A year later the Blair/ Brown government shows as little likelihood of proceeding down these lines as its Thatcherite predecessors. Surely one lesson to draw from this in the corridors of GMB HQ (or any other major union HQ) would be that it might be better in future to stop obliging the Blairites. If they want a safe seat – let them put their hat in the ring like everyone else. And let them say what they intend to do. Perhaps the best explanation for why the GMB backed the Blairite team might be that they calculated – rightly – that it would be centre-right and then calculated – wrongly – that it would give them a repeat of the relationship that unions enjoyed with the Wilson and Callaghan governments. Quite what they will do now that this is clearly not the case will be interesting. (Presumably their calculation will be that Labour = 55% ok, Conservative = 35% ok….Therefore continue to back Labour ).

The curious accidents of geography and history still resonate. The departure of John Edmonds in 2003 meant a leadership election in the GMB. Two candidates emerged from the organisational and political heartlands of the GMB: Kevin Curran (Northern Region, with a background on Tyneside) and Paul Kenny (London Region, former employee of Hammersmith and Fulham council). Curran won, shifting control of the entire union, in a considerable coup, back to the North East. One wonders if the curious and expedient volte-face of Mr Blair re: Ken Livingstone and the London mayoralty a few months later might not be related to the lobbying power and political preferences of Paul Kenny. (13)

Notes

1 Hilary Marquand, a key pro-US figure in the Labour Party, was MP for Middlesborough East as long ago as 1950-1961. He replaced Aneurin Bevan as Minister for Health in January 1951, after Bevan’s argument with Gaitskell, of whom Marquand was a close supporter. His son, David Marquand, was a luminary of Michael Young’s Political and Economic Planning, MP for Ashfield 1966-1977, a major ally of Roy Jenkins and a key figure in the launch of the SDP.

2 The story goes that Jack was told to go to a meeting room in Whitehaven one night and that if he turned up he would be selected.

3 Ivor Richard was not greatly inconvenienced by this turn of events. He was appointed UK Representative to the United Nations later in 1974.

4 Milne, apparently, was told off for supporting the Labour candidate in Lincoln against Taverne.

5 Wrigglesworth remains active in the North East. He was President of the Liberal Democrats in 1988, Chair of the Northern Region CBI in 1992 and currently Chairs UK Land Estates and the Newcastle-Gateshead Initiative.

6 It might be more than that. An undated, pseudonymously authored article Foundations and Empire, produced by the Solidarity group circa 1970, and possibly part of a magazine, documents a number of connections between the British and American intelligence services and their fronts and GMWU (as the GMB was then) officials and officers in the1950s and 60s.

7 Most people seem to recollect that this is an issue Bell got spectacularly wrong.

8 Both Pike and Woolas represent areas where the British National Party have made electoral gains in recent years. A lack of ground level activity by mainstream political parties has been blamed for inadvertently helping this.

9 We might also add to this list of figures with North-Eastern connections Sir Jeremy Beecham, Chair of the Local Government Association, the umbrella group for all local government in the UK, former leader of Newcastle City Council and candidate in Tynemouth in 1970.

10 The myth is that the local Party was too ‘left wing’ to select him. Actually he didn’t turn up to the selection meeting.

11 On the other hand precisely what was said between himself and the local Labour Party agent at the meeting he mentioned at the 2002 Labour Party Conference (see above), whether or not any other candidates had access to this type of private discussion and what conversations (if any) took place between the Agent and other parties around that time we can only guess at.

12 But only Parliamentary seats. The elections for mayors in the North East spectacularly backfired with Labour losing to a Conservative in North Tyneside, a football mascot in Hartlepool and a senior Police officer in Middlesborough. Labour has also lost ground in a number of local authorities to the Liberal Democrats. This and the rise of the BNP mentioned in note 8 above seems to indicate that the GMB machine concentrates on the importance of Parliamentary seats to the detriment of local level politics.

13 The ‘Let Ken Come Back’ campaign included many GMB activists in London. The union in London (i.e. Kenny ) also seems to have initially backed the hapless candidate Nicky Gavron against Ken rather than the stronger Tony Banks – thus preparing the ground for a hand-wringing plea to readmit Livingstone at a later date.