Lord Maclennan of Rogart
Labour minister who joined the SDP and helped to negotiate the merger with the Liberal Party
LORD MACLENNAN OF ROGART, who has died aged 83, enjoyed a 35-year career as MP for Caithness and Sutherland, first for Labour and then for the SDP and Liberal Democrats. Though never a star – he served five years as junior prices minister and briefly led the SDP after David Owen’s resignation – he displayed quiet tenacity, not least in holding a highly marginal seat.
An earnest, low-key London barrister, Robert Maclennan earned the nickname “Blubbering Bob” for bursting into tears in 1988 after the Liberals rejected the policy document – memorably christened the “Dead Parrot” – which had been drafted by him with David Steel’s approval as a basis for merger.
An accomplished Highland fiddler, Maclennan once confessed to having a “Churchillian tendency”, but his speaking style, though grand, was dull. He was cast in one parliamentary whodunit as the MP who sent so many in the Chamber to sleep that one was able to slip out, commit a murder and return unnoticed.
Maclennan met his match in Kenneth Clarke, who invited him to “go away, lie down in a darkened room, keep taking the tablets and think carefully whether the Liberal Democrats have a single opinion.”
He had the misfortune to be on his feet when word reached the Chamber in November 1990 of Mrs Thatcher’s failure to retain the Conservative leadership.
He was aware of his shortcomings, and after serving briefly as joint leader with Paddy Ashdown when the merged party was formed, he stood down. His self-denial helped it to assimilate former Social Democrats.
Maclennan became one of the Lib Dems’ most trusted figures. As party president from 1994 to 1998 he conducted the negotiations with Robin Cook on constitutional reform prior to the 1997 election that produced a joint Labour/lib Dem Cabinet committee, as well as proportional representation for European and devolved assembly elections.
With Tony Blair in power, he served with Ashdown and Lord Holme on the Cabinet committee. Unlike Ashdown, he was sanguine enough not to expect it to deliver seats in the Cabinet or PR for Westminster elections.
Maclennan saw the irony of the situation in 2010 when the formation of David Cameron’s Coalition brought him back to the Government benches after 31 years. He saw the Coalition as essential for the national interest, though he knew it would be electorally disastrous for his party.
Robert Adam Ross Maclennan was born on June 26 1936, son of the Glasgow gynaecologist Sir Hector Maclennan and Dr Isabel Adam. From Glasgow Academy he read Law at Balliol College, Oxford, continuing his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Columbia University in New York; he was called to the Bar at Grays Inn in 1962 and joined chambers in London.
Maclennan entered Parliament by capturing a seat from his future party. In 1964 George (later Lord) Mackie had gained Caithness and Sutherland for the Liberals, but in 1966 Maclennan, not yet 30, ousted him by 64 votes as Labour was re-elected by a landslide.
He championed the nuclear scientists at
Dounreay – raising their concerns over the incidence of leukaemia – as well as his rural constituents, and in 1970 he increased his majority against the national swing to 2,705.
Picked out as a prospect and made a PPS within a year, after Labour’s defeat Maclennan was appointed a Scottish affairs spokesman, moving in 1971 to defence. The next year he resigned in protest at Harold Wilson’s decision to oppose British entry to the Common Market.
When Wilson returned to power in March 1974 Maclennan was forgiven and made junior minister for Prices and Consumer Protection, under Shirley Williams and then Roy Hattersley. His initial task was to administer Labour’s temporary subsidies for staples like tea and cheese, and to police “profiteering” on food. As the inflationary tide turned he spent more time on consumer protection and company law.
Within months of Labour’s defeat in 1979 he was warning the rampant Bennites that their antics risked splitting the party, but initially he thought it was the Left who would break away.
When Michael Foot became leader late in 1980 Maclennan returned to the front bench, but within a month had signed the manifesto of the “Gang of Four” who soon after formed the SDP. “The party I joined has changed,” he said. In March 1981 he left Labour, also securing for the SDP its sole Tory recruit, Christopher Brocklebank-fowler.
Maclennan wrote the SDP’S constitution and became its agriculture spokesman, and more importantly its Scottish organiser, as it tried to prise moderates away from Labour and strike a deal with the Liberals. He played an important part in Roy Jenkins’s byelection victory at Glasgow Hillhead on the eve of the Falklands conflict, and in 1983 he almost tripled his majority to 6,843 despite his change of party.
In 1987 he increased it further, but the Alliance parties fared poorly and Steel demanded a merger. Maclennan agreed with Dr Owen that the SDP was being “bounced”, and when Owen resigned he was elected unopposed to succeed him. But he began negotiating with the Liberal Party, and eventually took the bulk of the SDP with him.
The process was a bumpy one as he set out tough terms, hoping in vain that this would keep Owen onside. The “Dead Parrot” fiasco stemmed in part from his efforts to achieve this, only to find that grassroots Liberals had their sticking points, too. Within days the merger was on again – assisted by Owen’s rejection of a final plea from Maclennan.
The merger shambles raised doubts over the judgment of Steel as well as Maclennan, and when the Social and Liberal Democrats were formed Ashdown became the party’s leader, with Maclennan as home affairs spokesman.
Maclennan was made a Privy Counsellor in 1997. He left the Commons at the 2001 election; he received a life peerage and played an active part in the Lords.
Robert Maclennan married Helen Noyes, widow of a Columbia University professor, in 1968; she survives him, along with their son and daughter, and his stepson.