John Smith (Labour Party leader)

In government

In February 1974 Smith declined Harold Wilson's offer of the office of Solicitor General for Scotland, not wishing his political career to become sidelined as a law officer.^[6] In October, he was made an Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Energy.^[7] In December 1975, he was made a Minister of State.^[8] Smith supported James Callaghan in the Labour Party leadership election after Wilson resigned in April 1976.^[9] When Callaghan became Prime Minister, Smith became a Minister of State at the Privy Council Office, serving with Labour's Deputy leader, Michael Foot, the Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons.^[10] In this position, Smith piloted the highly controversial devolution proposals for Scotland and Wales through the House of Commons.^[11] Smith's adroit handling of these proposals impressed Callaghan, and in November 1978, when Edmund Dell retired, Callaghan appointed Smith Secretary of State for Trade.^[12] In this post, Smith was the youngest member of the cabinet, and served there until the 1979 general election.

Shadow Cabinet

Smith was voted to the Shadow Cabinet in the elections of June 1979 and would be re-elected every year until 1992.^[13] Smith became Shadow Energy Secretary. In the Labour leadership election of November 1980, Smith voted for Denis Healey over Michael Foot.^[14] Smith remained in the Labour Party after figures on the right of the party formed the breakaway Social Democratic Party, remarking: "I am comfortable with the unions. They aren't. That's the big difference".^[15] Smith voted for Healey in the deputy leadership election of September 1981.^[16]

He became a QC in 1983, the same year that his constituency became Monklands East. During the 1983 general election, Smith concentrated on unemployment, arguing that the Conservatives had caused deindustrialisation and that a Labour government would increase investment, and therefore employment.^[17] Smith received over 50% of the vote in Monklands East, but Labour lost badly nationally. Smith then acted as Roy Hattersley's campaign manager in the leadership election and the deputy leadership election.^[18] After serving a year as Shadow Employment Secretary, Smith was Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry between late 1984 and 1987.

First heart attack

Smith suffered a heart attack on 9 October 1988, and was forced to spend three months away from Westminster to recover. On that occasion, he had complained of chest pains the night before, and had to be persuaded to cancel a flight to London so he could go to hospital for a check-up. He was examined at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary by an ECG. The doctor who examined him said "Whatever it is, we don't think it is your heart". Then Smith suddenly collapsed, and was briefly unconscious before coming around. He spent three days in intensive care before leaving hospital on 20 October 1988, and made a full recovery.

Smith made modifications to his lifestyle by going on a 1,000-calories per day diet, cutting down on rich foods and fine wines, giving up smoking and taking up Munro bagging and by the time of his death, he had succeeded in climbing 108 of the 277 Scottish Munros (mountains over 3,000 feet above sea level at the summit). His weight dropped from 15 stone 5 pounds (98 kg) at the time of the first heart attack, to 12 stone 10 pounds (81 kg) when he returned to Parliament on 23 January 1989.

Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

Smith was appointed Shadow Chancellor by Neil Kinnock in July 1987 after the Labour Party's general election defeat.^[19] Despite a quiet, modest manner, and his politically moderate stance, he was a witty, often scathing speaker. Smith was named as Parliamentarian of the Year twice: first in November 1986 for his performances during the Westland controversy, during which Leon Brittan resigned, and the second time in November 1989, for taking Nigel Lawson to task over the state of the economy and over his difficult relationship with Sir Alan Walters, the Prime Minister's economic adviser.^[20] Smith made two notably witty attacks on Lawson that year. On 7 June 1989, he sang the theme tune for the soap Neighbours at the dispatch box, lampooning the differences between Lawson and Sir Alan Walters, who was critical of Lawson's policies but whom Thatcher refused to sack.^[21] Then on 24 October, he made another scathing attack on the differences.^[22] Two days later, Lawson resigned, followed shortly afterwards by Walters.

Leader of HM Opposition

Following Labour's fourth consecutive defeat at the general election of April 1992, Neil Kinnock resigned as leader and Smith was elected Labour leader.^[23]

Although Labour had now been out of power for 13 years, their performance in the 1992 election had been much better than in the previous three. They had cut the Conservative majority from 102 seats to 21, and for most of the three years leading up to the election, opinion polls had indicated that Labour were more likely to win the election than the Conservatives. The resignation of long-serving but increasingly unpopular Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and the well-received election of John Major as her successor, had seen the comfortable Labour lead in the opinion polls wiped out and in the 17 months leading up to the election, its outcome had become much harder to predict. Much of the blame had been placed on Labour's "shadow budget" drawn up by Smith, which included raising the top rate of income tax from 40p in the pound to 50p, and the Conservative election campaign was centred on warning voters that they would face higher taxes under a Labour government.^[24]

In September 1992, Smith made his maiden speech as party leader, in which he attacked the Government's ERM debacle eight days earlier – an event which was seen by many observers as playing a large part in determining the outcome of the next general election, long before it was even on the political horizon, as from that point onwards the Labour Party was ascendant in the opinion polls, winning several seats from the Conservatives in by-elections (eventually even attracting a Conservative MP to defect to Labour) and trouncing them in local council elections.

In this speech, he referred to John Major as "the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government".^[25] At Labour's party conference, Smith branded Major and Norman Lamont the "Laurel and Hardy of British politics". This echoed his attacks on Major's government made before the 1992 election (while he was still shadow chancellor), most memorably when he labelled "irresponsible" Conservative plans for cutting income tax to 20%,^[26] and joked at a Labour Party rally in Sheffield that the Conservatives would have a box-office disaster with "Honey, I Shrunk the Economy" – in reference to the recent Disney motion picture Honey, I Shrunk the Kids – mocking the recession which was plaguing the British economy at the time.^[27]

In a June 1993 debate, Smith again savaged the Conservative Government, saying that under John Major's premiership, "the man with the non-Midas touch is in charge. It is no wonder that we live in a country where the Grand National does not start and hotels fall into the sea" (in reference to the 1993 Grand National, which was cancelled after a false start, and to Holbeck Hall Hotel in Scarborough, which had recently collapsed off a cliff).^[28]

During the same debate, Smith commented on a recent Government defeat in the Newbury by-election to the Liberal Democrats, a poor showing in the local elections and a subsequent Cabinet reshuffle by saying that "if we were to offer that tale of events to the BBC Light Entertainment Department as a script for a programme, I think that the producers of Yes Minister would have turned it down as hopelessly over the top. It might have even been too much for Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em".^[29] In the same speech, Smith also attacked the Conservatives' broken election promises (in particular Lamont's recent Budget decision to impose VAT on domestic energy bills) – claiming he possessed the last copy of a 1992 policy document "to escape the Central Office shredder". He also performed very well in the July 1993 motion of confidence debate on the Conservative government.

Despite his dispatch box successes (Smith was always more effective in the House of Commons than on platforms or at Prime Minister's Questions, though he began to improve at the latter towards the end of his life), Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were, under Smith's leadership, restless and privately anxious that the party had adopted a "One more heave" approach and had become over-cautious in tackling the legacy of "tax and spend".^[30]

Despite this, during his time as leader of the Labour Party, Smith abolished the trade union block vote at Labour party conferences and replaced it with "One member, one vote" at the 1993 party conference.^[31] He also committed a future Labour government to establishing a Scottish Parliament, an aim fulfilled by his successors after his death (most notably his close friend Donald Dewar). Smith was also a committed British Unionist. During Smith's tenure as leader the Labour party gained a significant lead in the polls over the Conservatives; on 5 May 1994, one week before Smith's death, the Conservatives suffered a major defeat in the British council elections, their worst in over 30 years. This happened in spite of the strong economic recovery and reduction of unemployment which had followed the declaration of the recession's end in April 1993.^[32] Labour's opinion poll lead was shown to be as high as 23% in May 1994.

Aftermath in the Labour Party

Following Smith's death, the Labour Party renamed its Walworth Road headquarters John Smith House in his memory.

Tony Blair, Smith's successor as Leader of the Labour Party, was initially quite popular and an effective campaigner who capitalised on public mistrust of the Conservative Party to win a landslide victory at the 1997 general election. Smith's biographer, Mark Stuart, claimed that Smith could have won Labour a victory on a scale similar to that achieved by Blair because of the combination of the Black Wednesday debacle and internal Conservative Party divisions over Europe since 1992. Stuart argues that the lack of a "Blair effect" would have meant that the Conservative Party would have held slightly over 200 seats (rather than the 165 it actually won) in the House of Commons, leaving the Conservatives in a position similar to that of Labour after the 1983 general election.^[39]