Lord Hoyle obituary: Labour backbencher and parliamentary party chairman

[Celerity]

Trade unionist made for political opposition whose son became Speaker of the Commons

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lord-hoyle-obituary-veteran-labour-backbencher-and-parliamentary-party-chairman-gw9z5ppxs

https://archive.ph/WlNo1

Hoyle, right, with the former prime minister and Labour leader Harold Wilson during the Warrington by-election, 1981, which he won against an SDP insurgency

During Doug Hoyle’s long career as a Labour MP he experienced significant changes in the party’s fortunes and its policies. A man of the left, he shifted his views only slightly under New Labour and Tony Blair. He became something of a grandee when he was elected by MPs as chairman of the parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in his last spell in the Commons (1992-97); and having once called for the abolition of the House of Lords, he took a life peerage shortly after his retirement as an MP. His political life centred on Lancashire. He unsuccessfully fought Clitheroe in the 1964 general election and then won Nelson & Colne in October 1974, by 669 votes. In such a marginal seat it was no surprise that he was defeated in the pro-Conservative swing that brought Margaret Thatcher to office in 1979.

Hoyle’s return to the Commons came about in dramatic circumstances. In the Warrington by-election in July 1981, the new Social Democratic Party launched its first parliamentary election campaign. It was largely a breakaway group from the Labour Party. Its well-known candidate was Roy Jenkins, recently returned from having been president of the European Commission. At the time Jenkins — smooth, wealthy, son of a Labour MP, and until recently leader of the Labour right wing — represented all that Hoyle detested. He dismissed Jenkins as “a class traitor” and “a retired pensioner from the EEC”. Although Warrington was one of the safest Labour seats in the country, all the media interest was on how the SDP would do.

Hoyle was ill at ease in what turned out to be something of a media circus. He won the by-election, but the margin was reduced from 10,000 to less than 1,800. Before a large television audience, Jenkins in his concession speech said that it had been the greatest result of his career and congratulated Hoyle on achieving Labour’s lowest vote in the seat for 50 years. For Labour and Hoyle it was a pyrrhic victory. Flanked by the party’s regional agent, Hoyle was persuaded to be brief but denounced the SDP campaign and attacked the press coverage. The by-election proved that the SDP was now an effective political force and a threat to both Labour and Conservative parties. However, at the 1983 general election, Warrington became Warrington North and reverted to being a safe Labour seat with Hoyle as its MP.



Short, stocky and with a trademark moustache, Hoyle was easily recognisable — a colleague compared him to a moustachioed version of the film actor Edward G Robinson. He was usually ready with a quote, often populist, expressed in his soft Lancastrian accent, and would introduce himself as “Doug ’oyle”. He was made for political opposition and indeed most of his career was spent with his party out of office: he was not considered for a frontbench position and did badly when he stood in elections for the shadow cabinet. In 1953 he married Pauline Spencer, who later acted as his secretary. She predeceased him in 1991. They had one son, Lindsay, who also became a Labour MP (elected for Chorley in 1997); he was knighted in the 2018 new year’s honours list and has served as Speaker of the House of Commons since 2019. Lindsay, a more politically centrist figure than Doug, was named by his cricket-loving father after the Australian cricket captain Lindsay Hassett.

snip