Dickson Mabon was the founder of The Manifesto Group of Labour MPs, an alliance of moderate MPs who fought the perceived leftward drift of the Labour Party in the 1970s.
20 Facts About Dickson Mabon
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Dickson Mabon was a Labour Co-operative MP until October 1981, when he defected to the SDP.
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Dickson Mabon lost his seat in 1983, and rejoined the Labour Party in 1991.
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Dickson Mabon was educated at Possilpark Primary School, Cumbrae Primary School and North Kelvinside Secondary School in Maryhill.
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Dickson Mabon worked as a Bevin Boy in the coal mining industry in Lanarkshire during the Second World War, before doing his National Service.
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Dickson Mabon studied medicine at the University of Glasgow after he was demobilised.
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Dickson Mabon was political columnist for the Scottish Daily Record from 1955 to 1964, and studied under Henry Kissinger at Harvard University in 1963.
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Dickson Mabon was the unsuccessful Labour candidate for Bute and North Ayrshire in 1951, and Labour Co-operative candidate for Renfrewshire West in 1955.
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Dickson Mabon was elected as a Labour Co-operative Member of Parliament for Greenock at a by-election in December 1955, replacing Tony Benn as Labour's youngest MP.
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Dickson Mabon became a frontbench Spokesman on Health in 1962.
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Dickson Mabon defected to the Social Democratic Party in October 1981.
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The party was founded by the so-called "Gang of Four" in March 1981, which consisted of right-wing Labour MPs discontented with the direction of the Labour Party at the time; but Dickson Mabon later called himself a founder member of the party.
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Dickson Mabon was one of the SDP's negotiators in their merger attempts with the Liberals, and joined the post-merger Social and Liberal Democrats upon its foundation.
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Dickson Mabon was chairman of SOS Children's Villages UK until 1993 and tried to get an SOS Children's Village built in Scotland, first near Glasgow and then at Stirling.
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Dickson Mabon rejoined the Labour Party in 1991, and subsequently became a member of the executive committee of Eastbourne Constituency Labour Party until 2004.
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Dickson Mabon kept up his interest in medicine, in 1990 becoming president of the Faculty of the History of Medicine.
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Dickson Mabon was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Freeman of the City of London.
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Dickson Mabon married Elizabeth Sarah "Liz" Zinn, an actress, in 1970.
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Dickson Mabon died on 10 April 2008, aged 82, at his home in Eastbourne.
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Dickson Mabon was survived by his wife and their son.