Ronnie Campbell
Hard-left veteran of the 1984-85 miners’ strike who spoke his mind as Labour MP for Blyth Valley
RONNIE CAMPBELL, who has died aged 80, was for 32 years the Leftwing Labour MP for Blyth Valley in Northumberland, widely respected for his work combatting drug addiction locally.
An ex-miner, twice arrested during the strike of 1984-85, Campbell rated Blyth “one of the biggest drug centres in the Northeast”, with dealers pressing their addicts to steal for them. In 1995, after 11 overdoses there in a year, he argued in the House that selling rave drugs over the counter would ruin the dealers.
He opposed both Gulf wars (one of his sons was a Royal Marine), the EU, compulsory ID cards, and – being a Catholic – abortion. In 1987, when he considered following party policy and opposing David Alton’s Bill to tighten abortion controls, his wife, a local councillor, threatened to denounce him.
He reckoned himself a royalist, but confessed that he would no longer be after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Though he supported radical Arab states, he described British Muslims interned at Guantanamo as “mercenaries” who had given no thought to the passengers on the airliners hijacked in the 9/11 attacks.
By the time he was elected in 1987, working-class Labour MPS were the exception: Campbell was one of the very few with an old-style tattoo. He always spoke his mind, irking Speaker Betty Boothroyd with his sedentary interventions.
While he complained that under Tony Blair Labour was “taking up Thatcher’s ideas”, he kept his leader supplied with local breadcakes known as stotties.
Ronald Campbell was born in Tynemouth on August 14 1943, one of eight children of Ronald Campbell, a joiner, and the former Edna Howes. While an MP, he was reunited with a half-brother who had been adopted.
He left Ridley High School, Blyth, at 14 to work at Bates Colliery. He stayed until the pit closed, spending 14 years at the coalface.
By the time of the strike, Campbell was NUM branch chairman. He took the lead on the picket line, being fined £75 for seizing a policeman who had grabbed his jacket. He took four other pickets out in a boat to intercept the tanker Granville before it could deliver 1,000 tonnes of oil to Blyth power station; they managed to speak to the crew, but the delivery was made.
After his colliery closed in 1986, Campbell signed on the dole, and until his election a year later, supported himself, his wife and four children on £96 a week.
He was elected to Blyth council in 1969 and its Blyth Valley successor in 1974. He chaired its environmental health committee and was vice-chairman of housing.
Labour politics locally were poisonous. In the wake of the Poulson affair Blyth’s MP, Eddie Milne, had been deselected after alleging corruption within the party machine. In February 1974 Labour fielded Ivor Richard, only for Milne, standing as Independent Labour, to trounce him. That October the party improbably chose the fox-hunting barrister John Ryman, who squeezed home by 78 votes.
Campbell started as a Ryman supporter, but when in 1986 Ryman announced that he would not stand again, the NUM nominated Campbell for the seat. Ryman claimed that the Militant Tendency was involved and demanded that Labour’s national executive (NEC) intervene. Campbell always denied any connection to Militant, despite calling for the rehabilitation of Trotsky. When the NEC endorsed him, Ryman threatened to precipitate a by-election. “John Ryman has become a bit of a joke,” Campbell said.
Ryman did not stand at the 1987 election, but with Labour out of sorts Campbell scraped home by 853 votes over the SDP.
He insisted on living on a miner’s pay, the rest of his salary funding an office in the constituency. Before finding a flat in London, he lived for two months in a Catholic hostel for homeless teenagers.
In the Commons he joined the hard-left Campaign Group, omitted the customary tribute to his predecessor from his maiden speech, and supported non-payment of the poll tax.
After Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait in 1990, Campbell and his fellow Left-wingers Dennis Canavan and Bob Parry flew to
Baghdad to make Iraq’s strongman “see sense”. They did not get to see Saddam, but returned hopeful that some Britons held hostage would be freed.
Campbell was active in the campaign to block the Maastricht Treaty. After Labour’s leader John Smith died, Campbell accused the BBC of trying to promote Blair’s chances by keeping Gordon Brown off the air. When Brown decided not to run, Campbell backed John Prescott.
In the Labour landslide of 1997, Campbell increased his majority to 17,736 despite the NUM withholding financial support. Soon after, he was banned from the Commons for a day for calling the former Tory minister Michael Jack a “hypocrite”; in 1999 he was one of 67 Labour rebels against the meanstesting of incapacity benefit.
Campbell’s election that year to chair the Northern group of Labour MPS did not mellow him. He was reproved for shouting “Bollocks!” at Michael Heseltine during a debate on pit closures, and in January 2002 was acquitted of assaulting a constituent during an altercation at an Indian restaurant.
When the Government nationalised Northern Rock in 2008, Campbell declared it “the People’s Bank” and opened an account there. During the MPS’ expenses scandal exposed by the Telegraph, he agreed to repay more than £6,000 claimed for furnishings in his London home.
Campbell nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership when Ed Miliband stood down in 2015, and was one of the few Labour MPS to call for Brexit before the following year’s referendum.
In September 2016 he underwent chemotherapy for stomach cancer. He was back the next April to be one of 13 MPS to vote against Theresa May calling a snap election – at which he was re-elected by 7,900 votes.
Campbell had intended the 2015 Parliament to be his last, and he retired when Boris Johnson won the December 2019 election. The Conservative Ian Levy’s 712-vote defeat of Campbell’s successor Susan Dungworth at Blyth Valley was one of the most spectacular breaches of Labour’s “Red Wall”.
Ronnie Campbell married Deirdre Mchale in 1967; they had a daughter and five sons.