John Tomlinson, the former Foreign Office minister, who has died aged 84, had an active career in Labour politics that spanned an extraordinary six decades. He was first elected to office as the youngest Sheffield city councillor in 1964, became an MP at his third attempt, in February 1974, sat as a member of the European parliament for 15 years from 1984, and was appointed in 1998 to the House of Lords, where he remained busily involved until his death.
He had the distinction of serving as the last parliamentary private secretary to Harold Wilson, before the latter’s surprise resignation in 1976 as prime minister. It was some measure of Tomlinson’s capabilities that he was appointed to such a significant post as a newly elected MP, shortly after the second 1974 general election that gave Wilson the overall parliamentary majority he had previously lacked. Tomlinson was a pro-Europe, loyalist moderate, a member of the influential Manifesto group of Labour MPs established to counter the perceived leftward drift of the party, and Wilson listened to and acted on the advice on party tactics proffered by his young aide.
Tomlinson was rewarded as Wilson left office with promotion to become a junior minister at the Foreign Office, under Tony Crosland and later David Owen, and the following year was given additional responsibility as the parliamentary under secretary at the Ministry of Overseas Development. It fell to Tomlinson to help oversee the organisation of Britain’s first presidency of the European council during the first half of 1977 (Britain having joined the then Common Market in 1973) and the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in London in 1977 which produced the Gleneagles agreement to discourage sporting links with apartheid South Africa. He was also involved with establishing the first direct elections to the European parliament in 1979.
Tomlinson won the West Midlands seat of Meriden, then the largest constituency in the UK, from the Conservative incumbent in the first 1974 election, and doubled his majority in the second. He swiftly became involved with what became the Meriden Motorcycle Co-operative which, supported by the new Labour government with £4.95m of public money, took over the former Triumph works, following a two-year occupation of the factory by 1,700 former employees. In his maiden speech he described it as a “great venture in industrial participation”, his enthusiasm for the project being additionally fuelled by his first job having been as the secretary of the Sheffield Co-operative party from 1961 until 1968. He became a lifelong enthusiast for the principles of the Co-operative movement and was a leading member of the Co-operative party.
Born in London, the son of Frederick, a head teacher, and his wife, Doris, Tomlinson attended Westminster City school and the Co-operative College, Loughborough. He studied health services management at Brunel University and secured a diploma in political, economic and social studies at Nottingham University. In 1968, after seven years with the Sheffield Co-operative party, he became head of research at the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW) for two years and then lectured in industrial relations until elected to Westminster.
Tomlinson had fought his first general election in the safe Tory seat of Bridlington, in East Yorkshire, in 1966 and came close to winning Walthamstow East in London in 1970, losing by 528 votes. By this time he was a member of Dartford borough council. He lost Meriden when Margaret Thatcher swept into office in 1979 and was so disconsolate that he put diesel in his petrol car that night. He signed on for the dole and when asked his previous occupation replied: “Her Majesty’s under secretary of state for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office”. Without blinking, the desk clerk said: “Professional and executive, next window.”
He took a post lecturing in industrial relations and management and subsequently as head of social studies at Solihull College of Technology until 1984, and during this time unsuccessfully contested North Warwickshire in the 1983 election. He published Left, Right: The March of Political Extremism in Britain in 1981 and was awarded a master’s degree in industrial relations by the University of Warwick the following year.
Elected as the MEP for Birmingham West in 1984, he became deputy leader of the Labour group in 1987 and Labour’s spokesman on budgetary control in 1989, a post he held for the remainder of his years in Europe, focusing on agricultural fraud and the problem of food surpluses. He took his experience of European politics to the House of Lords when he joined, remarking in his maiden speech that debates on Europe at Westminster were too often either exchanges of long-held prejudices or paranoid hostility to anything to do with Europe, even if it was to the benefit of the UK.
Tomlinson was popular as a parliamentarian across the political divide and was recognised as a man of principle who was prepared to engage with all comers on issues of importance to him. He was a member of the Lords’ select committee on the EU (1998-2002; 2004-08; 2010-15), the Lords’ audit committee (2008-13) and the Lords’ finance committee (2022-24); and was a member of the Council of Europe, and a trustee (1998-2007) and president (2002-07) of the Industry and Parliament Trust (1998-2007).
He is survived by his second wife, Paulette Fuller, whom he married in 1996, and by the four children from his first marriage, to Marianne Somar, which ended in divorce.
• John Edward Tomlinson, Lord Tomlinson, politician, born 1 August 1939; died 20 January 2024
