James Callaghan
Labour MP and namesake of the more famous prime minister
JAMES CALLAGHAN, who has died aged 91, had the misfortune to be a Labour MP when his namesake was prime minister, inevitably becoming known at Westminster as “the other Jim Callaghan”.
Though his 23 years in the Commons included ten after the more famous politician had retired, the thoughtful, amiable Callaghan never sought the limelight.
He was, however, an assiduous constituency MP who campaigned against school and hospital closures; he also put in sound work on the education, transport and national heritage select committees.
A member of the Leftwing Tribune Group, Callaghan was an anti-marketeer, opposed nuclear weapons and power and voted against the Gulf War; yet his mastery of Esperanto bore witness to his internationalism. He was an ally of Eric Heffer, under whom he served briefly as a front-bench spokesman on Europe and whose 1983 leadership campaign against Neil Kinnock he supported.
Callaghan did catch the headlines with one act of rebellion: his sacking in March 1976 as PPS to Joel Barnett, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, after abstaining in a division on spending cuts which the Government lost, forcing Harold Wilson to seek a vote of confidence. He had only had the job three months; later he would be briefly PPS to the Sports Minister Denis Howell.
Barnett was his constituency neighbour in industrial Lancashire, and when boundaries were redrawn in 1983 Callaghan defeated his former boss for the Labour candidacy in the new seat of Heywood and Middleton. After the election, Barnett was found a place in the Lords.
An art lecturer by profession, Callaghan as vice-chairman from 1981 of Labour’s backbench Arts Group applauded increases in spending on culture under Labour, and opposed moves by the Royal Opera House to end its touring presence in Manchester. He also introduced in 1976 a Bill to ensure workplace access and parking for the disabled.
Callaghan campaigned for a ban on boxing, which he condemned as “licensed barbarism” after Michael Watson’s serious brain injury in 1991, and against excessive violence on television. After 20 children were taken from their parents on an estate in his constituency in 1991 amid allegations of Satanic abuse, he urged that videos of films like Nightmare on Elm Street, which some had watched at home, should be banned.
James Callaghan was born in Manchester on January 28 1927, the son of a lorry driver with Irish roots, and educated at local schools. He was a tearaway in his youth; when injured in a fight he knew his way blindfold to Ancoats Hospital where the doctor would say: “Not you again, Callaghan!”
He studied at Manchester and London Universities, and after teaching in junior schools became in 1959 a lecturer in Art at St John’s College, Manchester. He was elected to Middleton council in 1971, and in the February 1974 election ousted the Conservative Alan Haselhurst by 517 votes to become MP for Middleton and Prestwich. He went on to build a comfortable majority.
In 1988 Callaghan challenged Margaret Thatcher to say whether the non-release of a 1957 Whitehall file on Hugh Gaitskell under the 30-year rule had anything to do with an allegation in Peter Wright’s Spycatcher that the Labour leader had subsequently been assassinated.
He served from 1992 on the Speaker’s panel of committee chairmen, and retired at the 1997 election.
James Callaghan was unmarried.
James Callaghan, born January 28 1927, died March 29 2018