Lord Dixon obituary

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/22/lord-dixon-obituary

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It was a source of the deepest regret and sorrow to Don Dixon, Labour’s former deputy chief whip, who has died aged 87, that he should prove to have been the last Labour MP elected for the constituency of Jarrow while there was still shipbuilding on the River Tyne. He was born in Jarrow, into a family with links across the generations to the river and its historic industry and, after 30 years as a shipyard worker himself, he spent much of his subsequent political career unsuccessfully fighting to defend its continued existence.

His two defining characteristics were pride and loyalty. He was proud of being able to say that he had lived on the banks of the Tyne for every year of his life. He was proud when he was chosen as his party’s candidate for the safe Labour seat in the 1979 election in preference to two academic aspirants with, as he put it, more letters behind their names than the eight letters in his own. And throughout his adult life, he was loyal to the town of his birth and to the politics of the Labour party, which he harnessed to try to help the people he represented.

He had a reputation in the House of Commons as a gruff and somewhat belligerent MP, a man of few words, whose face bore testimony to his education in the school of hard knocks. He admitted to having been in a few street fights in his time, but he was a shrewd man with a hidden affection for Geordie poetry, who was popular with his parliamentary colleagues. He spoke little for two reasons: he spent most of his parliamentary career in the whips’ office and he was once advised by his grandfather: “Always think first and make sure that what you have to say is an improvement on the silence.”

He was the son of Jane (nee Dean) and Christopher Dixon. His father and grandfather had both been thrown out of work in the shipyards during his early childhood, in the difficult days of the 1930s, but after Ellison Street elementary school and service in the Royal Engineers during the second world war, Don followed them into the Tyneside yards. His experiences there, including periods on the dole which took him to Wearside and Lowestoft, brought him into politics. He joined the Labour party aged 21 and was elected to Jarrow borough council in 1963.

He had a distinguished local career, leading the council in 1969 and serving as the town’s mayor in 1971. He was granted the freedom of Jarrow in 1972 and when South Tyneside district council was formed two years later, he chaired the housing committee and the ruling Labour group.

In 1974 he became a full-time official with the General, Municipal and Boilermakers’ Union and when the veteran Labour MP for Jarrow, Ernest Fernyhough, decided to retire, Dixon was the natural successor. Arriving in the Commons with the election that brought Margaret Thatcher into office, he used his maiden speech to defend shipbuilding from the political incursions of a Conservative government. He spoke of the pride of his town for the ships it had built and the men it had bred and their fight for the right to work with the Jarrow crusade, led by Fernyhough’s predecessor, “Wee Ellen” Wilkinson, as she was known locally. In 1986, 50 years after the Jarrow march, Dixon claimed that Thatcher succeeded where the Nazis had failed by putting an end to Tyneside shipbuilding.

He was a natural fixer and during his years in parliament served on a series of administrative committees dealing with services, selection and catering. He was a member of the employment select committee for four years and the committee considering televising parliamentary proceedings – a development he opposed on the grounds that it would lead to grandstanding by individual politicians.

He held traditional views across a wide spectrum, opposing devolution (on the grounds that Scotland already benefited excessively, at the cost of the north-east of England), Europe, abortion and the establishment of a national lottery. He was against lifting the ban on gay people serving in the armed forces and on lowering the age of homosexual consent to 16. He was also profoundly suspicious of the trend towards modernisation within the Labour party and resented the election of what he regarded as too many teachers and academics as MPs.

Neil Kinnock appointed him in 1983 to the Labour whips’ office, where he was known for working hard and not suffering fools gladly. He was a tee- totaller and was always to be spotted in the members’ tea room breakfasting at 7.30am. In 1986 he stood unsuccessfully for election as deputy chief whip, failing because of the antipathy of Scottish Labour MPs who resented his views on devolution, but in 1987 he won the election with a three-way split vote over Peter Snape and Andrew Bennett.

He was a respected incumbent in the post but, after Tony Blair’s election as leader, his days were numbered, not least when he delayed the announcement of a frontbench reshuffle by five days because of his opposition to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as a junior opposition whip. He fell victim to the New Labour new broom when a secret deal was struck the following year, in 1996, to abolish the election of the chief and deputy chief whip and make them appointed posts. Blair made him a member of the privy council in recompense and offered him a seat in the House of Lords on his resignation as an MP the following year. Dixon stood down as a member of the Lords a year ago.

He is survived by his wife, Doreen (nee Morad), whom he married in 1966 after they met as fellow Jarrow councillors, two children, Karen and Tony, and four grandchildren.

• Donald Dixon, Lord Dixon, shipyard worker and politician, born 6 March 1929; died 19 February 2017