John Prescott obituary by his former adviser: ‘John’s story is Labour’s story’

The story of John Prescott is the story of the Labour movement of the last half century. He went from a deeply-felt shame of failing the iniquitous 11-plus grammar school entrance exam to the joy and pride of becoming Deputy Prime Minister.

The common thread of this long and significant life was using the Labour Party and parliament to fight for social justice. He was a force of nature, always on the go, constantly looking for the political way through to deal with an injustice.

Leaving school at 16, he went straight into the merchant navy where employment conditions were governed by centuries-old maritime laws. He was at the core of the national seamen’s strike in 1966 where he was one of the “politically motivated men” denounced by Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

READ MORE: John Prescott obituary by his former adviser: ‘John’s story is Labour’s story’

But the lesson he drew from that strike was that the unions could never solve industrial issues on their own. He strongly believed that the point of the Labour Party was to win power to improve people’s lives. He was unapologetically a parliamentary socialist.

As one of the youngest Labour MPs when he was elected to Hull East in 1970, he quickly made a name for himself as a left wing parliamentary firebrand but he never took the predictable line.

As a constituency MP, he supported the rioting prisoners of Hull jail against the authorities and backed the Icelanders in the 1974 cod war, a position unlikely to win friends in the capital of Britain’s deep sea fishing industry. And he surprised his fellow anti-Common Market left wing friends when he stood to become a member of the then European Assembly and became Leader of the Labour Group.

A pragmatic socialist

He was very much a pragmatic socialist. Although educated at Ruskin and Hull University by leading Marxist economists, he was never an ideologue and had little time for the far-left. He always wanted to achieve things for people which meant working within the system whether in Europe or Britain.

And he was always prepared to look beyond his political prejudices. For example, I was with him in 1985 when a very young TV producer called Peter Mandelson asked for his support to become Labour’s director of communications.

Though sceptical of what he saw as Peter’s right wing politics, John thought that Labour’s communications were in dire need of improvement and lent his support which swung some of the left wing votes on the NEC in Peter’s favour. His relationship with Peter had its ups and downs over the following decades but only a few weeks ago, they had a warm and friendly FaceTime call.

John was fascinated by policy. His focus in the early 80s was never on the left’s favoured causes of mandatory reselection of MPs or unilateral disarmament. He always wanted to get stuck into policy. His approach to a front bench appointment – regional policy under Michael Foot, transport and employment under Neil Kinnock – was always the same – assemble experts, debate the policy difficulties and publish a policy document. During his life, he published at least a dozen.

READ MORE: A look back at John Prescott’s life in politics

During the industrial unrest of the Thatcher years, there were tensions with Neil Kinnock over the approach to the miners’ strike. He never liked Scargill and didn’t share the NUM left’s syndicalist politics but he always felt that his job was to support rank and file miners on the picket lines. Although that didn’t stop him moving Labour’s policy towards accepting the Thatcher employment laws.

Similarly he stood up to the unions on the statutory minimum wage. He worked closely with his friend Rodney Bickerstaffe, the leader of NUPE, to support the minimum wage at a time when most of the major unions opposed it because it interfered in collective bargaining. He succeeded in swinging Labour policy in favour of the minimum wage, a policy he was immensely proud to see implemented by the Labour government a few years later.

He was always conscious of his speeches and particularly his tendency to mangle words. After I first started working for him, I saw him give a fiery address to a room full of railway shop stewards. They gave him a standing ovation but the guy standing next to me said ‘No idea what he said but wasn’t he brilliant’.

Mostly his speeches didn’t bear textual analysis but you were usually in no doubt what his meaning and intent were. When Leader John Smith faced defeat in 1993 over one member, one vote in party elections, he turned to Prescott to win the day from the platform. His speech was a tour de force but, as one Lobby journalist told me afterwards, ‘a brilliant speech but sounded like it was delivered through a scrambler’.

New Labour years

The death of his friend John Smith affected him deeply but he was in no doubt that he wanted to be at the top table and stood for Leader and Deputy. It was during that election campaign when he forged a close relationship with Tony Blair. Although he often disagreed with some of Blair’s policy approaches, he always respected him. He told me once “the great thing about Blair is that he tells you when he disagrees with you and you can have an argument.” That was always his preferred approach – disagree in the open, have a scrap and come together afterwards.

He had run for Deputy Leader twice previously and had a strong view about the role – do the trench warfare for the Leader in the NEC and the party. So he was always loyal to Blair and protected the Leader’s back through many political difficulties in government.

And becoming Deputy Prime Minister was the proudest day of his life. He loved being a minister, not for the trappings (although he insisted on his beloved government Jag) but for the ability to achieve things on behalf of the people Labour was elected to represent.

He reframed Blair’s modernising project with the slogan “traditional values in a modern setting” which was the basis of his support for the reform of Clause IV. That was the basis of his message to the party – as someone seen as the voice of traditional Labourism, Prescott gave his blessing to the Blair project.

Following the 1997 landslide, Blair stuck to his promise to John and made him Deputy Prime Minister. He also gave him a major department, combining transport, the environment and the regions. His first major job was the global climate change summit in Kyoto.

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Prescott revelled in his role of trying to help broker an agreement. His skills as a union negotiator came into their own and he struck a life long friendship with the then US Vice President Al Gore as they achieved agreement on what was the most significant environment treaty ever negotiated.

Of course many will remember Prescott as the man who punched the voter. He recalled that immediately after that general election, Blair was chairing the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Downing Street and Prescott went into the Cabinet Room to a round of applause. The footage had gone round the world winning him respect as someone brave enough to do what many of them dreamed.

Throughout the Labour government, he maintained good relationships with both Prime Minister and Chancellor and tried to broker agreements over shepherds’ pie in his Whitehall apartment. In the post-Blair/Prescott years, he just wanted Labour to win.

He surprised me a little after the 2010 election defeat. In the days following, Gordon was trying to put together an agreement for coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I expected John, a life long hater of any other parties, to be against. No, he said, our voters would expect us to do anything to keep the Tories out.

I had the pleasure of working for John in the early 1980s. He brought me down from Hull to become his first researcher as shadow transport secretary. But you never stopped working for John – for the next 35 years he would often call out of the blue to ask for help on something. He was a kind and loyal person and I will miss him immensely. He leaves his phenomenal wife, Pauline, who has been his constant carer and support over the last few years and his sons Jonathan and David.

John Prescott was a one-off. A man who fought from his challenging upbringing to become one of the most powerful people in the country. A man who remained faithful to his politics and deserves to be remembered as one of the titans of the Labour movement of the century.