Lord Stoddart of Swindon
Independent-minded politician who fought EC membership and was expelled from the Labour Party
LORD STODDART OF SWINDON, who has died aged 94, was an implacable Labour opponent of British membership of the European Community, for 22 years chairing the all-party Campaign for an Independent Britain.
A miner’s son, David Stoddart gave Labour years of service as a councillor and a combative backbench MP. Yet he became increasingly alienated from the party, first over Europe and later on other issues.
In 2001 he was suspended after 54 years’ membership for backing a Socialist Alliance candidate at St Helen’s in protest at Labour’s imposition of Shaun Woodward, a defector from the Conservatives. That Christmas, he was expelled.
Stoddart never totally toed the line, but his individualism blossomed in the Lords after he lost his eponymous seat in 1983. Though a non-smoker, he became a champion of smokers’ rights, condemning “the so-called middle-class national sport of abusing smokers” and the “lifestyle police”.
When smoking in public places was banned in 2007, he accused a “supine” government of capitulating to “junk science, doubtful statistics and unwarranted assertions by the medical profession”.
Stoddart opposed the Bill to outlaw foxhunting, branding it “spiteful, cowardly and aimed at a particular section of the community whom the promoters hate.” Supporting direct action against the ban, he invoked the spirit of the trade union martyrs who had given birth to the Labour movement. Ironically, he had in the 1970s suggested that Princess Anne’s parents “have a word with her” about her support for bloodsports.
He condemned legislation to make divorce easier as “doing away with one of the Commandments: adultery”, and opposed lowering the homosexual age of consent to 16.
Stoddart was also deeply unhappy about the Blair government’s reform of the Lords. He did not oppose reform as such – indeed, in 1988 he proposed that peers failing to attend a minimum number of sittings be barred from voting. But he detected a political fix, saying Tony Blair lacked the guts to go for wholesale reform, and would have voted with the hereditaries had they resisted.
Yet Europe was Stoddart’s chief concern, from the day in 1971 when he condemned Edward Heath’s “obsession with the Common Market”. He insisted Britain’s loss of sovereignty would reduce the Queen to a “vassal”. He deplored MEPS’ profligacy with taxpayers’ money. He ridiculed the “idiocies” of directives from Brussels. And he disputed proMarketeers’ claims that membership benefited, or could benefit, Britain’s economy, marshalling statistics to support his case.
Stoddart campaigned alongside Labour’s quintessential antiMarketeer Peter Shore for a “No” vote in the 1975 referendum. He voted against the Bill for direct elections to the European Parliament, complaining of “the erosion of the powers of this House”. He denounced supporters of closer integration as “Eurocranks” and declared that “British” was now a dirty word.
When the British Anti-common Market Campaign changed its name in 1985 to the Campaign for an Independent Britain, Stoddart took the chair. He welcomed Tory Eurosceptics’ formation of the Bruges Group six years later, declaring: “Many of us are so petrified that we have forgotten to say ‘No’.” And when the Maastricht treaty was concluded, he first called for a referendum, then joined forces with Lords Tebbit, Pearson of Rannoch and Bruce of Donington to resist it.
David Leonard Stoddart was born on May 4 1926, the son of Arthur and Queenie Stoddart. Educated at St Clement Danes and Henley grammar schools, he left at 16 to join Post Office Telephones, then worked as a railway and hospital clerk before becoming in 1951 a power station clerical worker, active in the Electrical Trades Union and Nalgo.
Joining the Labour Party in 1947, Stoddart became a Reading borough councillor in 1954. He chaired the town’s housing, transport and finance committees, and was Labour group leader from 1962 to 1970.
He fought Newbury in 1959 and again in 1964, almost halving the Conservative majority. In 1968 he was selected for the safe Labour seat of Swindon, but the sitting member Francis Noel-baker aroused such illfeeling by havering over whether to resign to defend his estates in Greece against expropriation that when he did stand down in the spring of 1969, Stoddart narrowly lost the by-election. Next year, despite a national swing to the Tories, Stoddart regained Swindon with a 5,576 majority.
In the Commons he tabled a motion demanding the nationalisation of Ford, asserting that multinationals were one of the greatest social evils. He highlighted hardship caused by Inland Revenue “maladministration”, and demanded the dismissal of three senior Army officers for allegedly interfering in politics.
Stoddart asked the most damaging questions over a meeting between the defence minister Geoffrey Johnson Smith and the criminal and self-styled British spy Kenneth Littlejohn.
It was also Stoddart who forced Michael Heseltine to apologise to the House for suggesting that the Government was contemplating whether to give further aid to the
“Hovertrain” project when it had already decided to cancel.
When Tory backbenchers started pelting Labour speakers with pennies, Stoddart grabbed the top hat used for raising points of order, caught the coins in it and refused to hand them back. The practice ceased.
During the three-day week of 197374, he undermined Heath’s case against the miners by telling the House on behalf of his union that when ministers warned of an imminent breakdown in electricity supply, some power stations had such stocks of coal that they were turning supplies away.
When Labour returned to power, he was briefly a PPS before being appointed a government whip. When James Callaghan succeeded Harold Wilson in 1976, Stoddart was promoted to Lord Commissioner of the Treasury (a senior whip). But he found strongarming Left-wing MPS into supporting a beleaguered government distasteful, and in November 1977 returned to the back benches; his resignation freed him to vote against the Bill on direct elections.
Stoddart remained a backbencher during Labour’s civil war after its defeat in 1979, but in 1982 Michael Foot appointed him an industry spokesman. By then a firm opponent of nuclear energy as well as atomic weapons, he took to the task with relish. But in 1983 he lost his seat. Created a life peer that July, he served until 1987 as an Opposition whip and energy spokesman, playing the anti-nuclear card and opposing gas privatisation.
In 1992, in partnership with Lord Pearson, he formed the Lords’ Maastricht study group which coordinated opposition to the treaty and forced the Government to allow time for a thorough debate. After his expulsion from the Labour Party, he sat as an Independent Labour peer.
David Stoddart married, in 1961, Jennifer Percival-alwyn, who survives him with one son; another son predeceased them. He also leaves a daughter by a previous marriage.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon, born May 4 1926, died November 14 2020