Roy Hattersley was MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook for over 32 years from 1964 to 1997, and served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.
36 Facts About Roy Hattersley
2.
Hattersley was born on 28 December 1932 in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, to Enid Brackenbury and Frederick Roy Hattersley, who married in the 1950s.
3.
Roy Hattersley's father, at various times a police officer, clerk at Sheffield town hall, and chairman of the council's Health Committee, was a former Roman Catholic priest, the parish priest at St Joseph's at Shirebrook in Derbyshire, who renounced the church and left the priesthood to cohabit with Hattersley's mother, Enid, a married woman at whose wedding he had officiated two weeks earlier; Frederick ultimately died an atheist.
4.
Roy Hattersley attended Sheffield City Grammar School passing the 11-plus on his second attempt in 1945 at the age of 12 and went from there to study at the University of Hull.
5.
At university Roy Hattersley joined the Socialist Society and was one of those responsible for changing its name to the "Labour Club" and affiliating it with the non-aligned International Union of Socialist Youth rather than the Soviet-backed International Union of Students.
6.
Roy Hattersley became chairman of the new club and later treasurer, and he went on to chair the National Association of Labour Student Organisations.
7.
Roy Hattersley married his first wife, Molly, who became a headteacher and educational administrator.
8.
Roy Hattersley's aim became a Westminster seat, and he was eventually selected for Labour to stand for election in the Sutton Coldfield constituency but lost to the Conservative Geoffrey Lloyd in 1959.
9.
Roy Hattersley kept hunting for prospective candidacies, applying for twenty-five seats over three years.
10.
Roy Hattersley wrote his first Endpiece column for The Spectator.
11.
Roy Hattersley was reportedly disliked by Prime Minister Harold Wilson as a "Jenkinsite".
12.
Roy Hattersley was appointed Deputy Foreign Affairs Spokesman, again under Healey, which involved a lot of foreign travel if nothing else.
13.
Roy Hattersley took a Visiting Fellowship to the Harvard Kennedy School.
14.
Roy Hattersley headed the British delegation to Reykjavik during the "Cod Wars", but was primarily given the task of renegotiating the terms of the UK's membership of the EEC.
15.
In 1979 Roy Hattersley was appointed to shadow Michael Heseltine as the Minister for the Environment, contending with him over the cuts in local government powers and the "Right to Buy".
16.
The leadership contest was between Healey and Foot, with Roy Hattersley organising Healey's campaign.
17.
Healey was made deputy leader and Roy Hattersley was appointed Shadow Home Secretary, but felt that Foot was "a good man in the wrong job", "a baffling combination of the admirable and the absurd".
18.
Roy Hattersley had very little regard for those Labour defectors who created the SDP in 1981.
19.
Roy Hattersley helped found Labour Solidarity and credits the group with preventing the disintegration of the Labour Party.
20.
Roy Hattersley had the support of most of the Shadow Cabinet, but the majority of the PLP, the constituency groups and the unions were in favour of Kinnock.
21.
Roy Hattersley remained deputy for eight years and Shadow Chancellor until 1987, when he moved back to Shadow Home Affairs.
22.
In June 1993, Roy Hattersley cancelled an appearance on TV panel show Have I Got News for You with very late notice, which infuriated the production staff and hosts, leading to Roy Hattersley being replaced with a tub of lard.
23.
In February 1994, Roy Hattersley announced he would leave politics at the following general election.
24.
Roy Hattersley was made a life peer as Baron Hattersley, of Sparkbrook in the County of West Midlands on 24 November 1997.
25.
Roy Hattersley was long regarded as being on the right-wing of the party, but with New Labour in power he found himself criticising a Labour government from the left, stating that "Blair's Labour Party is not the Labour Party I joined".
26.
Roy Hattersley mentioned repeatedly that he would be supporting Gordon Brown as leader.
27.
Roy Hattersley retired from the House of Lords on 19 May 2017.
28.
In 1996, Hattersley was fined for an incident involving his dog, Buster, after it killed a goose in one of London's royal parks.
29.
Roy Hattersley later wrote the "diary" of Buster, writing from the dog's perspective on the incident, in which it claimed to have acted in self-defence.
30.
In 2003, Hattersley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
31.
Roy Hattersley is the author of three novels and several biographies.
32.
Roy Hattersley has written biographies on religious topics, and on the Edwardian period as well.
33.
In 2008, Roy Hattersley appeared in a documentary on the DVD for the Doctor Who serial Doctor Who and the Silurians, to discuss the political climate that existed at the time of making the serial.
34.
Roy Hattersley now writes a regular column for the Daily Mail, "In Search of England", about different parts of the United Kingdom; it normally appears in the paper on Tuesdays.
35.
Roy Hattersley married his first wife, the educationalist Molly, in 1956.
36.
Roy Hattersley is a dedicated supporter of Sheffield Wednesday, and a member of the Reform and Garrick clubs.