John Prescott: A Labour Giant

It would be a real shame if the lasting memories of John Prescott, whose death was announced today, Thursday 21 November, concentrate on his occasionally tortuous use of language, or his robust style.

Of course, people will remember the definitive speech he gave in defence of John Smith’s proposals for ‘One Member, One Vote’ at Labour Party Conference in 1993, but they forget the context. Yes, the speech might have been a bit mangled, but it was a brave and courageous intervention on an issue that the Leader might well have lost the vote on because of, at best, lukewarm trade union support. That speech turned things around – literally ‘saved the day’ - and should be remembered for this reason, rather than any syntax slip-ups or faux pas. It was a calculated and crucial political intervention by a serious politician – and it worked.  

Of course, people will also remember ‘that punch’. While on the election trial during the 2001 campaign in Rhyl, North Wales, a pro-hunting protestor threw an egg at Prescott from literally about a yard away. His natural reaction was to defend himself and he quickly turned and threw a punch at the protestor, catching him squarely on the jaw. A brief contretemps and scuffle ensued, the protestor was led away and Prescott carried on with the visit. When asked about the incident the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said, amongst other things, that ‘You could not wish for a deputy more loyal, more true and more decent. He cares about his country, and he cares passionately about his politics, but John is John and I’m lucky to have him as my deputy.’

During his temporary hiatus in the Cabinet Office between June 2001 and May 2002, I worked with him as his Government Whip. Although still Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State, with responsibilities for a whole host of Cabinet sub-committees, he did not relish this period out of what he saw as frontline government service. He would later describe his time at the Cabinet Office as a ‘sabbatical’ and longed to return to ‘active service’.

He did so with the creation of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister which was essentially all the non-transport parts of his former gigantic Department of the Environment, Regions and Transport. I was privileged to work with him as a junior minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister with responsibility for regeneration, housing and planning. It was here, up close and personal, that I got an insight inro the real John Prescott. I saw at close hand the dedication, depth and intellectual rigour of the man. A far cry from the image rendered by ‘that speech’ and ‘that punch’. I shared meetings with him where he would be on top of every detail and would hold the civil servants’ feet to the fire on a range of issues over meetings that would last sometimes three or four hours.

At our first meeting in the ODPM, he said to me ‘If you don’t know what you want, then don’t blame the Civil Service.’ Too often these days, lesser ministers do precisely that and hide behind the Civil Service to detract from their own failures and lack of vision. Not John Prescott. He was always on top of his brief and had an astonishing command of the detail. This was the same John Prescott that developed a number of policy initiatives in Opposition from what to do about infrastructure spend to how to harness local government as economic drivers for local economies to providing new thinking on transport including the development trams and buses. He led a department that made significant progress in a number of areas certainly in the areas that I worked on with him – housing regeneration and planning. He would be the first to say that there could and should have always been more progress but, by any measure, he was a success and a Labour giant who had truly earned his seat at the Cabinet table.

I always found him to be a genuinely supportive colleague who was both generous of spirit and always attentive to the needs of his minsters. In some ways a shy man who nonetheless could summarise an argument or read the political consequences and context of any given situation with a real speed and dexterity. A serious politician he contributed much more to the vision and durability of the Labour government from 1997 to 2010 than he is given credit for.

Much more than a ‘marriage guidance counsellor between Brown and Blair, he was a thoughtful, generous and reflective man, a political giant and an important Labour figure whose kind we are unlikely to ever see again. He really does deserve to be remembered for much, much more than ‘that speech’ and ‘that punch’ – and I hope that he will be.  

Dr Tony McNulty is Teaching Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. He was the Labour Member of Parliament for Harrow East from 1997 to 2010 and served in various ministerial positions in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments including two stints as Minister for London.