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Alfred James Wellbeloved MP - Boy Seaman to Member of Parliament World Naval Ships Forums Archive

Alfred James Wellbeloved MP - Boy Seaman to Member of Parliament

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Julia Langdon guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 September 2012 15.56 BST [B]James Wellbeloved obituary[/B] Labour MP and defence minister who defected to the SDP and then rejoined the party under Tony Blair Jim Wellbeloved, who has died aged 86, lived up to his name when he won the 1965 byelection that brought him into the House of Commons as the Labour MP for Erith and Crayford. For by doing so, he saved Harold Wilson's first government, which was existing with a precarious majority of one but also facing the prospect of another critical byelection in Hull. A succession of Labour's star turns – including James Callaghan, George Brown, Anthony Greenwood and Bessie Braddock – had been dispatched in an attempt to scatter some gold dust on the campaign and over the character of the candidate, in case his earnest competence as the leader of the local council did not provide the necessary charisma. [B]When he rose to make his maiden speech on 6 December 1965, Wellbeloved noted that the day marked the anniversary of the beginning of his first career, 23 years earlier, when he had signed up as a boy seaman of 16 in the Royal Navy. He then spoke with enormous confidence on the technical, if somewhat tedious, subject of rating reform,[/B] and in doing so gave a signal of the nature of the political career he would follow at Westminster. He proved an able and assiduous MP in pursuit of the interests of local government and remained strongly committed to the issues of security and defence, with [B][COLOR="Red"]particular regard to the concerns of the ranks and the lower deck. He was, for example, strongly critical of the 1970 decision to abandon the daily tot of rum served in the navy[/COLOR][/B]. He also made a name for himself as a fervent critic of the Soviet Union, which earned him unflattering comment among his own colleagues in the tearoom. Businesslike and forthright, he said what he thought and was contemptuous of leftwing ideology, frequently berating some of the leading lights of his party's left. It was a question from Wellbeloved that led Michael Foot publicly to disown Peter Tatchell as the Labour candidate in the highly controversial 1983 Bermondsey byelection. This approach did not make him a popular man in the party, and although he had previously been a parliamentary private secretary to the defence minister Gerry Reynolds and the foreign secretary, Michael Stewart, before the 1970 election, Wilson failed to promote him when Labour regained office in 1974, in order not to annoy the party leftwing on whom he himself relied. When Callaghan succeeded as prime minister, however, having a comprehension of Wellbeloved from his own experience as a naval rating, he immediately made him a defence minister with responsibility for the RAF. He was a success in this job with the services and the MoD, but as Labour embarked on civil war after the 1979 election defeat, Wellbeloved had little hesitation in joining the exodus two years later to the newly formed SDP. Although he lost his seat in 1983, it was a narrow defeat and demonstrated that he had won and retained the respect of his constituents. He rejoined the Labour party under the leadership of Tony Blair and remarked that it was rather more rightwing than the SDP. It was not widely known that as a result of tuberculosis, Wellbeloved had only one lung. After leaving parliament he worked tirelessly for organ transplant donation and was lauded for the degree of public awareness that he helped bring to the subject. From 1984 to 1993 he was director general of the National Kidney Research Fund. His main hobby was camping and caravanning. He was born, as he lived and died, in Kent, the son of a butcher father. Following naval service in the second world war, he studied at South East London Technical College and worked in building and marketing. From 1950, he was a Labour councillor on Erith borough council. When Erith became part of the new London borough of Bexley, he was the first leader of the new council. He is survived by his wife, Mavis, two sons and a daughter. source [URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/17/james-wellbeloved"]The Guardian[/URL] Little h

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