Michael Meacher: Tony Benn ally whose left-wing principles brought him into conflict with successive Labour leaders
He lived just long enough to see the Labour left return from its 30 years in the wilderness
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Your support makes all the difference.In 1989, I wrote a story predicting that the Labour leader Neil Kinnock would sack Michael Meacher as shadow Employment Secretary for refusing to dilute the party’s opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s reforms of trade union law.
The following week, a rather angry Mr Meacher rang me up. “How are you?” I asked. “Still here,” he replied. A few days later, he was moved and, as I had predicted, replaced by a Young Turk called Tony Blair, who made his mark by ending Labour’s support for the closed shop, under which workers were required to join a union.
Mr Meacher, who died today aged 75 after a short illness, was sore about my story and I don’t blame him. But later we patched it up and did business on other matters --notably green issues, about which he was passionate. His place in the Shadow Cabinet should under Labour’s rulebook have guaranteed him a seat in Mr Blair’s first Cabinet when the party returned to power in 1997. Instead, Mr Blair snubbed the left-winger by making him Minister of State for the Environment. Characteristically, Mr Meacher beavered away and fully deserved the generous tributes he has received from green groups. He secured better protection for the environment and wildlife, and opened land in England and Wales to walkers under the “right to roam”. He was ahead of his time on climate change.
He voted for the Iraq War in 2003 through gritted teeth, later describing it as "the biggest political mistake of my life". Mr Blair did not return the favour, dropping him from his Government a few months later. The rest of Mr Meacher’s 45 years in Parliament were spent on the backbenches. But that did not halt his prescient campaigns on issues such as the need for better regulation of the banks. I know from covering his local patch from Westminster that he was an assiduous worker for his Oldham West and Royton constituents.
His left-wing principles brought him into conflict with successive Labour leaders. Like Jeremy Corbyn, he was a close ally of Tony Benn; Mr Meacher was dubbed his “vicar on earth.” In 1983, he ran unsuccessfully for the party’s deputy leadership as the left’s candidate.
Mr Meacher’s death shocked MPs but he lived long enough to see the Labour left return from its 30 years in the wilderness when Mr Corbyn won the party leadership last month. Mr Meacher urged Mr Corbyn to stand was one of the fewer than 20 MPs to nominate him who really wanted him to win, rather than just to ensure a debate. “We have lost a good man of fundamental decency who exemplified the very best socialist and labour traditions of this country,” said Mr Corbyn.
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