Albert Booth 1928-2010: an "Old Labour" man

Submitted by Matthew on 18 February, 2010 - 10:18 Author: Janine Booth

Albert Booth, former “Old Labour” Cabinet Minister, lifelong socialist and trade unionist, and my much-loved uncle, has died aged 81.

Albert was born in Winchester in 1928. His father's search for work took the family up and down the country, and by the late 1930s they were living in Willesden, north London. One day, ten-year-old Albert answered a knock on the door. An unemployed hunger marcher was collecting along their street to pay for the funeral of a fellow marcher who had died en route. Young Albert listened with horror as he learned that when working-class people died, their bodies lay unburied until their grieving loved ones could raise the cash for a burial. The sheer, brutal injustice of this added to the socialist zeal imparted by his parents (my grandparents) to send Albert on the road to a socialist life.

Spending the war living in Scarborough, Albert left school at 13 and studied evening classes, funded by a grant from the Co-op. As the war ended, he moved to Tyneside and began work as an engineering draughtsman. He quickly became an active trade unionist, and by his early 20s was attending the national conference of the draughtsmen's union (now part of Unite).

He joined the Labour Party as an extension of his trade unionism, was a national council member of the Labour League of Youth, secretary of his constituency party at the age of 24, and was a Labour election agent in 1951 and 1955. On the latter occasion, a young woman named Joan Amis volunteered her services to Labour's election campaign; Albert and Joan married two years later, had three sons and a fantastic lifelong partnership. Albert was a Tynemouth borough councillor from 1962 to 1965, and chaired the local Trades Council.

Having previously put up a decent show in losing a safe Tory seat, Albert was elected Labour MP for Barrow-in-Furness in 1966. As an MP, he was active in the soft-left Tribune Group, then rather more influential than now. His closest political ally, in many ways his mentor, was Michael Foot.

When Labour kicked out the Tories in 1974, Foot became Secretary of State for Employment and picked Albert as his minister, in what was seen as an appointment to satisfy the unions and the left. As minister, Albert drafted some important legislation, including the employment sections of the Race Discrimination and Sex Discrimination Acts. At last, it became illegal to sack a worker for being black, or to pay a worker less for being female. He also drafted the Employment Protection Act, which created ACAS and enshrined in law that the state favoured collective bargaining, ie., that employers should negotiate workers' pay and conditions with their trade unions. This clause would later be repealed by Thatcher, and has not been restored by New Labour, a fact for which former Labour Party General Secretary Jim Mortimer roundly castigated the government at Albert's funeral.

When Harold Wilson resigned as Prime Minister in 1976, Foot became leader of the House of Commons and Albert succeeded him as employment secretary. The legislative highlight was probably the 1977 health and safety reps' regulations, still in use and set out in the “Brown Book”. It forced employers to recognise union-selected health and safety representatives and to afford them various important rights, for example, to carry out workplace inspections.

However, that Labour Government badly let down working-class people, falling out with the unions, attacking jobs and public services, lashing up with the Liberals, and signing a woeful deal with the International Monetary Fund. It ended in the “winter of discontent'”, and its unpopularity opened the door for Thatcher's Tories. Albert argued against some of this in Cabinet, but supported the leadership's line outside, earning criticism from the left.

Socialists said that never again should there be a Labour government like that one — although subsequent ones have been even worse!

When Labour lost the 1979 election, Albert became transport spokesperson, and hired a young Peter Mandelson as his researcher, his first job at Westminster. In his last years, Albert described this to me with a sad smile as the worst mistake he ever made.

Albert lost his seat in the 1983 general election. One reason was that he refused to compromise his commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament, at a time when this was a dividing line between Labour's left and right, and when the new nuclear submarines were to be built in his constituency. Despite Albert arranging for Foot to write to Vickers workers assuring them that Labour would defend their jobs when it scrapped nuclear weapons, the issue still both lost him the seat and provoked substantial personal grief for him and his family. His stand on this issue earned him a reputation for integrity, Tam Dalyell describing him in an obituary in the Independent as the most principled politician he ever knew, even though not the best.

A further reason for his defeat in Barrow was a nasty campaign by anti-abortionists based in the local Catholic church, who preached that Catholics should not vote for Albert Booth and put up posters denouncing him as a baby killer. Albert believed that the law should not prevent women accessing abortion should they feel they needed to, and had refused to sign an anti-abortion Early Day Motion.

Albert became Labour Party treasurer in 1984, and sought election to Parliament in the Warrington South constituency in 1987. He had been offered the safe seat of a retiring Labour MP, but refused on the logical grounds that it was the Tory seats that Labour needed to win! He lost the election, but achieved the biggest swing to Labour in the country. He was then offered a seat in the House of Lords, but refused on the principle that as a democrat, he could not accept a seat that he had not been elected to.

Albert then worked as transport director for South Yorkshire and then Hounslow Councils until his retirement, when he remained active in his trade union, though less so in a Labour Party he found increasingly distant from him politically. In the week before his death, he both gave his apologies that he could not attend his union branch meeting because he did not feel too well, and decided that he could no longer represent the Labour Party as a delegate to external bodies.

He also spent his time enjoying life with his family, cycling, walking, fishing, spending hours preparing delicious meals, and volunteering with his local Methodist church. Albert (or Uncle Ted to me) was a genuinely nice bloke — humble, friendly, very funny, great with kids, listening as much as talking, never pulling rank or putting anyone down. In one amusing episode, he spent about half an hour at my 30th birthday party arguing with a posh and arrogant young Tory that one of my mates had brought along. He politely pulled apart each one of his arguments, but never once revealed who he was.

Albert was a profoundly caring man, his socialism coming more from morality than from Marx. He understood that socialism would come not from earnest wishing, but from a movement, the labour movement. Albert Booth's political life was not without mistakes, but the labour movement is poorer without him.

Comments

Submitted by Matthew on Fri, 19/02/2010 - 08:32

The North West Evening Mail published this obituary of Albert Booth which prompted one of his former constituents to comment:

"back in the late seventies and early eighties I worked there in Barrow docks...Our boss..was a law 'unto himself', who hired and fired workers as he liked. We were disorganised without Union representation or anything similar. But our luck changed for the better the day Mr Albert Booth visited Barrow....we literally just walked up to him and said what the problem was. Quite informally he said,...leave it to me lads, I'll sort it out... and that's exactly what he did. Mr Booth had a word with our boss...and hey preto, we were allowed to get organised and join the Union.

It was sad then to hear of Mr Booth's passing, he did his bit for many of us and for that Albert, we are eternally grateful to you."

Somehow I can't imagine the current Blairite MP for Barrow John Hutton doing the same thing...

Submitted by AWL on Sun, 05/09/2021 - 09:06

On the other hand, re-reading about the Grunwick dispute of 1976-8, during which AB was Secretary of State for Employment - it highlights the issues Janine raises about the record of the 1970s Labour government, quite spectacularly. Presumably Booth was sympathetic to the strikers, and yet...

Sacha Ismail

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