How Labour giant Roy Hattersley overcame savage Spitting Image jibes and tub of lard TV insult to help Blair into No.10

ONE-TIME top Labour figure Roy Hattersley, who has died aged 93, was once replaced on TV’s Have I Got News For You, with a tub of lard – it was the producer’s revenge after he pulled out of the show with very little notice. The satirical puppet show Spitting Image also portrayed him as a blustering, blubbery, pompous character spraying saliva over everyone he talked to, while he was mocked as the “Yorkshire Pudding.” But behind such savage, cruel humour about his appearance and appetite was a man who for several decades was close to the top of the Labour Party, including nine years as deputy leader. And he contributed behind the scenes to the party’s rebirth which led to Tony Blair in Downing Street. Born in Sheffield in 1932, Roy Sydney George Hattersley’s background was unconventional. His father Frederick was a Roman Catholic priest who conducted the wedding of his mother Enid to another man. Within two weeks she left her new husband and the pair moved in together. After that rocky start they became the epitome of the respectable working class. He renounced his faith and became at various times a police officer, town hall clerk and health committee chairman. She became a city councillor and Lord Mayor of Sheffield. The young Roy joined the Labour Party, electioneering for local and parliamentary candidates from the age of 12. He passed the 11-plus on his second attempt to attend the city grammar school and he switched from history to economics at Hull because his mother told him that was the best route into politics. Most read in The Sun He clashed with the university librarian, renowned poet Philip Larkin who for decades afterwards referred to Hattersley as “a great menacing slob.” After university, Hattersley worked for a short time at a Sheffield steelworks and for two years with the Workers’ Educational Association. He was elected to the city council in 1956 aged just 25 and chaired the housing committee. He tried and failed to become MP for Sutton Coldfield and over three years applied to be the Labour candidate in 25 seats. His persistence paid off and in 1964 won the previously Tory seat of Birmingham Sparkbrook. He became a junior Department of Labour minister and was involved in premier Harold Wilson’s controversial attempts to curb trade union power, putting him firmly on the Right of the party. He was then switched to become deputy to Defence Secretary Denis Healey in 1969. His first major task was to sign the Army Board Order which sent troops to Northern Ireland at the start of The Troubles. After Labour’s 1970 defeat, Hattersley followed Healey to the shadow foreign affairs brief and became an enthusiastic supporter of the Common Market. He was one of 69 Labour rebels who voted with the Conservatives for EEC entry. Back in government after 1974, he stayed in the Foreign Office team and headed the UK delegation to Reykjavik during the Cod Wars, but his main job was negotiating EEC membership. He entered the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection. After Mrs Thatcher’s 1979 election landslide, Hattersley shadowed Michael Heseltine on the environment, opposing the Right to Buy legislation for council homes. But it was Labour’s internal warfare that took up most of his time. Hattersley ran Healey’s failed leadership campaign against Left-winger Michael Foot but was made Shadow Home Secretary when Healey became deputy leader. Both came under constant attack from the Hard Left under Tony Benn. He was vitriolic about those fellow Labour Right-wingers who split to the breakaway social democrats. One, a friend for years, said: “Hattersley insulted me to my face and behind my back, and systematically wrecked our friendship.” Hattersley valued party loyalty above all else. When Foot stood down after Labour’s disastrous 1983 defeat, Hattersley went for the top job, helped by a young Peter Mandelson. Although Hattersley was backed by most of the Shadow Cabinet, Neil Kinnock took three times as many votes in the overall contest. The career-shattering news was broken to him by TV reporter Julia Summerville as he left a West End musical. Instead of blubbing, he treated her to a soft-shoe shuffle, crooning: “Even when the darkest clouds are in the sky / You mustn’t cry, and you mustn’t sigh…” His message was clear – he would soldier on. Hattersley was consoled with the deputy leadership. Together they were seen as a “dream ticket” with Kinnock on the Left and Hattersley on the Right. Together they expelled the hard-line Militant Tendency, fought off a Tony Benn leadership challenge and topped opinion polls as Mrs Thatcher’s popularity plunged. She was replaced by John Major and as the 1992 election approached, Hattersley said that “with every day that passes, Neil looks more and more like the real tenant of number 10 Downing Street.” Instead, Labour was defeated for the fourth time in a row. Kinnock quit and Hattersley supported his old friend John Smith for the Leadership. He bought a house in a fashionable area within the sound of the Westminster division bell, joined the Reform Club, developed a taste for claret and dined in grand restaurants. But as Kinnock’s deputy he was loyal and hard-working. When in June 1993, when HIGNFY replaced Hattersley with a tub of lard, the producers said “they possessed the same qualities and were liable to give similar performances.” The following year Hattersley announced he would leave politics at the following general election, and he was made a life peer in November 1997. In the meantime, Hattersley was fined after his dog Buster killed a goose in a royal park one of London’s royal parks and he later wrote his pet’s “diary” claiming self-defence. Having been seen as a Right-winger for decades, Hattersley then began sniping at Tony Blair’s New Labour over modernisation, saying: “Blair’s Labour Party is not the Labour Party I joined”. Roy Hattersley retired from the House of Lords in 2017. Throughout his career Hattersley wrote political and religious biographies, history books, memoirs of Yorkshire and novels, along with regular newspaper columns, and in 2003 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Hattersley married his first wife, head-teacher Molly in 1956 and they divorced 57 years later in 2013. They had no children. He then married Maggie, his literary agent. Hattersley opposed the monarchy, supported Sheffield Wednesday and enjoyed London club life.