Jimmy Hood: Union stalwart and veteran of the 1984 miners’ strike who became a long-serving Labour MP

He cut his political teeth against the demise of the mining industry in Scotland, opposed independence in favour of working-class unity and voted against the Iraq war

‘Honesty with oneself is a prerequisite to honour,’ Hood said in his maiden speech after being elected to Parliament in 1987 (ITN/Rex)

Jimmy Hood was a Scottish Labour politician who opposed independence for Scotland in favour of working-class unity. “If the Scottish people are to be better off economically,” he said, “I’d still be against Scottish independence, and I’d still vote no.”

Hood represented Clydesdale in Parliament from 1987 to 2015. He was also an official of the National Union of Mineworkers during the miners’ strike of 1984-85.

The former MP, who lost his seat to the SNP sweep in 2015, who has died aged 69, was Born in Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire. His mother was a mill worker and his father a miner.

While attending Motherwell technical college he got a job at the Auchlochan colliery. In 1967 he married Marion McCleary, who survives him along with their children Bill and Helen.

The mining industry in that part of Scotland was being destroyed, so Hood uprooted his wife and young son to seek employment in the mines of the Nottinghamshire coalfield. In his maiden speech in Westminster, he said: “I was one of the original industrial gypsies, and I now stand elected as member of Parliament for Clydesdale, where I was born and bred. I liken this experience to the salmon coming back home from the sea to the fresh water.”

He found a ready job at the Ollerton pit as a coalface engineer. Joining the Labour Party in 1970, Hood was elected to Ollerton Parish Council in 1973 and to the Newark and Sherwood District Council in 1979. From this position he was one of the leaders of the NUM strike in Nottinghamshire that supported Arthur Scargill. He became involved in epic battles with the Union of Democratic Miners in Nottinghamshire in 1984 and 1985.

It was widely felt that the refusal to strike of the majority of those who worked in the highly productive Nottinghamshire pits led to the failure of the NUM’s action. Hood told me that he put his name forward for the Clydesdale seat when it became clear that Dame Judith Hart would not stand again, partly because he could not face a lifetime of bitterness and strife in Nottinghamshire between those who had supported the strike and those who had defied Scargill (about whom Hood had increasing reservations).

In 1987 he won the seat with a majority of 10,502 over a Conservative rival’s 11,324. With only 45 per cent of the vote, Hood became quickly aware that extreme politics would not produce the Labour government which, as a constructive trade unionist, he craved.

I vividly remember his maiden speech on a hot July evening in 1987: He said: “I am well aware of the traditions of this House that new members are expected to be nice and uncontroversial, to say nice and pleasant things, to sit down and then to descend to the tea rooms or the bars for a well-earned pat on the back from one’s peers.

“I shall at all times, where possible, respect this place and its traditions, but honesty with oneself is a prerequisite to honour, and no honourable member representing working-class people can, after eight years of Mrs Thatcher’s government, come to this place from a Scottish constituency such as Clydesdale, listen to the Queen’s Speech, knowing the further misery that this government intends to inflict on the working-class people of my constituency and not be controversial.”

Hood was indeed to be controversial but because he was never ill-mannered and because he respected his opponents, he became very well-liked by both colleagues and opponents. He was a cause politician and presented, usually under the 10-minute rule bill, a series of worthwhile measures that were later encapsulated in government legislation.

For example, in 1991 he brought in a bill to make illegal the consumption of alcohol by under-18s prohibit its consumption in designated areas. He told the Commons that he first became aware of the problem through his surgery work when an elderly woman came to see him and said that she was frightened to go out of her home after 6pm as gangs of drunken youths were terrorising her little housing estate and pensioners were prisoners in their own homes.

Jimmy Hood (centre) visits London in 1987 with other Scottish MPs to appeal to keep lochs free of nuclear weapons (PA) (PA Archive/PA Images)

“I am not just talking about the sly pint of beer or half pint of lager that is drunk in the backroom of a pub or disco by 16- and 17-year-olds,” he said. “Rather, I am talking about the 12- to 13-year-old girls and boys who become hooked on hard booze and stalk the streets at night getting involved in petty social misbehaviour and progressing to serious alcohol-dependent problems that inevitably lead to serious crimes.”

Hood recounted how a constituent had come to see him about her 16-year-old son who had been a high achiever at school and was set for university. He had become trapped in a web of alcohol abuse, dropped out of school and got into trouble with the police. He then faced the serious consequences of missing out on education and of the legacy of a criminal record – a life wasted, all because of alcohol abuse at a young and tender age.

Another issue on which Hood’s constant campaigning in and out of Parliament made a difference was society’s attitude to ME. He introduced the first ME bill to chart the progress of the disease. Hood’s sustained interest – he didn’t just take up causes on the heels of a headline and then drop them – altered the public perception of ME sufferers.

A third cause was that of school-transport safety. In 1995 he campaigned, after a terrible accident in his constituency, for the imposing of stricter standards on school vehicles and provision for the licensing by local authorities of school vehicles and their drivers.

However, Hood’s most lasting contribution to public life will be his membership over 16 years and chairmanship of the Select Committee on European Legislation. He was naturally shrewd and extremely intelligent, and successive members told me that Hood had a balance of tolerance and expeditiousness, the same qualities that made him a highly successful member of the Speaker’s Panel of Chairmen, those who chair government bills as they go through the house. In my 40 years’ experience, he was one of the very best chairmen of the Scottish Group of Labour MPs.

My abiding memory of Jimmy Hood and his supportive wife Marion was as fellow members of a delegation led by Bernie Grant MP to Libya in 1991. Hood was able to put the most penetrating questions in a way that did not cause offence. He deeply impressed the Libyan, British and American engineers of Brown and Root who were engaged in constructing the Great Man-Made River Project.

He was enormously widely travelled, and his personality was a credit to Britain abroad. I often wished that he had had charge of foreign policy, since I believe that Britain’s position would have been the stronger if run by someone of Jimmy Hood’s caring international outlook. He was of the build, and not only physically, of Ernest Bevin.

James Hood, politician, born 16 May 1948, died 4 December 2017

Sir Thomas ‘Tam’ Dalyell, the writer of this obituary, was a fellow Labour MP who died in January 2017