Death of former Stratford MP Alan Howarth who defected to Labour from Conservatives

FORMER Stratford Conservative MP Alan Howarth, who dramatically crossed the floor of the Commons to join Tony Blair’s Labour Party, has died at the age 81.

Baron Howarth of Newport, as he became, died from cancer on 10th September.

A junior minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, he became disenchanted with Conservative social policies and in 1995 crossed the floor to Labour, going on to be disability and then arts minister for Mr Blair.

He was the first Conservative MP to sit as a Labour member since Oswald Mosley and was one of only a few politicians in recent years to have served as a minister in both Labour and Conservative governments. He sat in the House of Lords as a Labour life peer.

Mr Howarth was born 11th June, 1944, son of Thomas EB Howarth, MC, TD, and his wife Margaret. He married in 1967 Gillian Chance, daughter of Arthur Chance, of Dublin, by whom he had two sons and two daughters. They divorced in 1996. He was later the partner of Labour life peer, the late Baroness Hollis of Heigham, who was said to have been instrumental in persuading him to join Labour.

An English teacher at Westminster School, he was recruited to Conservative Central Office where he caught the eye of Margaret Thatcher and became vice-chairman of the Tory Party, and was elected three times to what was then the ultra-safe seat of Stratford-on-Avon, the first being in 1983.

He was a founder member of the Thatcherite No Turning Back group. He served as a whip, and was subsequently parliamentary under-secretary of state for education and science from 1989 to 1992, becoming the architect of the polytechnics’ transition to university status. But having served in a number of frontbench roles, including as an education minister, and as a Tory whip, he became increasingly unhappy with the direction of his party and disenchanted with Conservative social policies.

With the help of Alastair Campbell, he defected to Labour in 1995, crossing the floor on the eve of Tory party conference in a blaze of publicity, reducing Mr Major’s majority to just five in the process.

To continue in parliament after the 1997 general election, he needed a seat and getting selected as a former Conservative in a South Wales which still keenly felt the impact of the Tories taking on the miners was a considerable achievement, said his Newport East successor, Jessica Morden.

“But win them over he did, by visiting the CLP members door-to-door – he was said to park his Jaguar around the corner. Clever, thoughtful and sincere he won the selection through graft and on merit,” she said.

After Labour’s election victory in 1997, he was appointed parliamentary under-secretary of state for education and employment, becoming minister for the arts the following year.

He was dropped from the government after the 2001 general election, and stood down from the House of Commons at the 2005 general election.

Mr Howarth was Conservative MP for Stratford-on-Avon from 1983 to 1995 and, for Labour, MP for Newport East. He was appointed CBE in 1982, and a Privy Counsellor in 2000.

He was also president and founding chair of the National Centre for Creative Health who described him as “an inspirational leader of the creative health movement for over 25 years since his time as minister for the arts”.

His memoir, Begun, Continued, was published earlier this year.