Pro-european Labour moderate and Harold Wilson’s final PPS
LORD TOMLINSON, who has died aged 84, was a moderate Labour MP and Foreign Office minister, then an MEP and deputy Labour leader at Strasbourg; a member of Labour’s Manifesto Group and a leading figure in the Co-operative Party, he served as PPS to Harold Wilson during his final months as prime minister.
John Edward Tomlinson was born in London on August 1 1939, the son of Frederick Tomlinson, a headmaster, and his wife Doris. He was educated at Westminster City School and the Co-operative College, Loughborough.
Tomlinson began his working life as secretary of Sheffield’s Co-operative Party, and in 1964 was elected the city’s youngest councillor. In 1968 he joined the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers as its head of research, then from 1970 lectured in industrial relations.
Tomlinson fought his first seat – Bridlington – in 1966. Having sat out the 1970 election, he was selected for the bellwether Meriden constituency, winning the seat from the Tory incumbent at the “who governs Britain?” election called by Edward Heath in February 1974. That October he doubled his majority.
His priority was to save the threatened Triumph motorcycle works at Meriden, which the unions were trying to keep open as a workers’ co-operative. Tony Benn, Wilson’s Industry Secretary, put in government money, and when Michael Heseltine accused Benn of pressurising the workers into agreeing to the cooperative, Tomlinson retorted that his constituents were fighting 24/7 for the right to work, and that jobs across the West Midlands would be lost.
The venture developed new 750cc models, primarily for the American market, but was eventually brought down in 1983 by the strength of the pound.
In December 1975 Tomlinson became Wilson’s PPS. After Wilson’s retirement in March 1976 he was appointed an extra Parliamentary Undersecretary at the FCO and served under two foreign secretaries: Anthony Crosland and David Owen.
At the 1979 election, Tomlinson lost Meriden to the Conservative Iain Mills by 4,127 votes. He became senior lecturer in industrial relations and management, and later Head of Social Studies, at Solihull College of Technology.
In 1981 he published Left, Right: The march of political extremism in Britain, cataloguing the factions posing a threat to a liberal society. It included a claim that the KGB had sent one of its agents to inflitrate the Militant Tendency to shield it from “complete and damaging exposure”. He also flagged up that the National Front was trying to infiltrate several trade unions.
In 1984, he was elected MEP for Birmingham West. At Strasbourg he became whip to the multinational Socialist group, over objections from the Labour group leader Alf Lomas, who customarily voted with the French communists. When, in 1987, Lomas was ousted, Tomlinson – one of the strongest pro-europeans in the group – became deputy leader.
He spoke mainly on the cost to the taxpayer of food surpluses and fraud on the agriculture budgets. As Labour’s spokesman on budgetary control, Tomlinson urged the European Parliament to save £30 million a year by sitting only in Brussels and was furious when Air France offered British and Irish MEPS cheap fares as an inducement to continue sitting at Strasbourg.
In 1998 Tomlinson was created a life peer. In the Lords he chaired the Education Committee, and in 2002-03 was the peers’ representative on the Convention devising a constitution for the EU. In the wake of the Brexit referendum of 2016, he pressed Theresa May’s government for examples of progress in negotiating Britain’s withdrawal.
John Tomlinson married Marianne Somar in 1963. The marriage was dissolved and in 1996 he married, secondly, Paulette Fuller.