Journal of Liberal History obituary

Official portrait of Lord Andrew Stunell Photo: Chris McAndrew, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Andrew Stunell combined a commitment to Liberal values with a highly practical negotiating skill. He initially came into Liberal politics through a single issue: the Harold Wilson government reneging on its guarantee to the Kenyan Asians to admit them to Britain if the post-independence Kenyatta government expelled them. When, in 1968, their expulsion happened, the Labour government passed a new Commonwealth Immigrants Act to restrict drastically their entry to the UK. Though from a family that frowned on political activism, the ground for his political response was prepared by his non-conformist commitment to his local Baptist church which had already led to him being involved in international development projects. Like others who joined the Liberal party on a single issue of principle, Stunell found the party a congenial home, well suited to his personality.

Stunell always saw his aptitude as being in the practical application of his beliefs rather than the intellectual development of philosophy and policy. That practicality was evident even from his choice of architecture as his university courses and, when he had a professional post in Runcorn New Town Development Corporation, he was active in his trade union, NALGO, and spent four years as staff side representative negotiating on the Whitley Council for New Towns. Living at the time in Chester he was elected to the city council in 1979, serving there for eleven years, and to the Cheshire county council from 1981 to 1991. On the latter he immediately became the Liberal Alliance group leader and was thrust into the difficult practicalities of a hung council. Typically Stunell, having concluded a modus operandi for Liberal Alliance involvement in the governance of the council, enshrined this in a document which became known as the “Cheshire Convention”. It was subsequently used as the model for ensuring the effective administration of councils with no single party control.

Stunell contested his local Chester parliamentary constituency three times , in 1979, 1983 and 1987. It was an uphill task, not least being a Labour/Conservative marginal, but he increased the Liberal Alliance vote on each occasion - in 1987 against the national trend. In 1989 he was persuaded to put his name forward for the candidature in the Hazel Grove  constituency, just twenty miles from Chester. This was much more promising Liberal/Conservative marginal and had been held briefly between the two 1974 elections by the charismatic GP, Michael Winstanley. Stunell was duly adopted and at the 1992 election slightly increased the party vote - again against the national trend - but failed to gain the seat by just 929 votes. He then committed himself fully to the constituency, moving there from Chester with his family. He had given up his architectural practice in 1985 to work full time for the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors and this gave him rather more freedom for politics. Knowing well the electoral advantage of a presence on the local council, in 1994 he fought and won a seat on the Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council. At the 1997 parliamentary election Stunell gained the Hazel Grove seat with an almost 12,000 majority and a swing way ahead of the party’s national performance. It was the culmination of eight years careful planned campaigning; and significantly by the time of the 1997 election Liberal Democrats held every seat in the Hazel Grove constituency on the Stockport Council. Like many Liberals, Stunell had sacrificed financial advancement in order to concentrate on his politics and, as a consequence, he was astounded at what he regarded was a high MP’s salary. Typically he had never bothered to find out the pay and, when he was informed of the amount, he called his wife, Gillian, and said to her “we’re rich!”Similarly, never having taken himself too seriously, he happily involved himself in the practical tasks at his local Methodist church.

Immediately following the 1987 general election, at which the two Alliance parties had dropped back compared with 1983, albeit only slightly¹, David Steel bounced the parties into moving towards merger and at the Harrogate Liberal Assembly in September that year delegates recognised his negotiating experience in local government and appointed Stunell (and also myself) to the eight members directly elected to the negotiating team.² His first action was to draft a paper for the first meeting of the Liberal team. This set out the “issues that must be settled by the team prior to substantive talks with the SDP” (Stunell emphasis). The paper went on to set out many of the pitfalls ahead “into which the team subsequently fell”; he also called for an analysis of the weaknesses and strengths on both sides, “Unfortunately this never took place”. ³ Later in the negotiations, when members of the team were speculating on whether amendments to the final documents should be debated if the [Liberal] Assembly did not vote for merger, Stunell was decisive stating that the Assembly was sovereign and that “merger needs the Assembly’s massive support”.⁴ Throughout the negotiations Stunell was unflappable and played a significant role, even though at one point he alarmed colleagues by stating that he was less concerned about the aims of merger than the processes of negotiation.

Immediately on Stunell’s election the then party leader, Paddy Ashdown, aware of his particular skill made him Deputy Whip. It is clear that Ashdown had a high regard for Stunell’s loyalty and for his ability to defuse internal dissent and that he would act professionally even when he personally disagreed with the line being promoted.⁵ Ashdown’s successor, Charles Kennedy promoted Stunell to Chief Whip in 2001 and he continued in that post until the end of Kenney’s leadership in 2006. Under his stewardship as Chief Whip every Liberal Democrat voted against the March 2003 invasion of Iraq - the only party to do so unanimously - even before the absence of the assumed weapons of mass destruction became apparent. A year later he headed the Private Members’ ballot and successfully steered through the Commons an act designed to make new buildings greener and safer. Stunell was also concerned at the way new MPs were expected to cope in a complex procedural and political environment and was instrumental in getting induction courses set up for later intakes.  As Chief Whip Stunell was “hiding a disturbing secret: the Leader [Charles Kennedy] was drinking heavily and it was beginning to affect his performance. [The party] made it through without it becoming public, but the whispers grew louder, and eventually Mr Kennedy was ousted in a putsch by the party’s MPs.” Stunell admitted that “behind the scenes things were difficutl.”⁶ For over four years, during almost the whole of Stunell’s period as Chief Whip, the problem of Kennedy’s alcoholism had hovered over the party’s fortunes and required considerable smounts of his time trying to resolve internal tensions not least to hide the situation from the media. Inevitably there were those who felt he had “failed to grasp the scale of their anxieties.”⁷ By December 2005 Stunell could not have been unaware of the inevitable outcome of Kennedy’s ill health having received a “devastating aide-memoir” fro Chris Rennard, the party’s Chief Executive, setting out that Kennedy’s position was untenable.⁸

 As is invariably the case with smaller parliamentary parties, Liberal Democrat Members have to take on subject responsibilities and Stunell was spokesman on Energy (1997-2006) which tied in well with his architectural qualifications and experience, and on Communities and Local Government (2006-08). He was also Chair of the local election campaign team, 2008, and vice-chair of the general election campaign team, (2009-10). In late 2009, some six months before the anticipated date of the general election, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, set up a highly confidential internal group to prepare for the eventuality of the party having the balance of power. In addition to Stunell, its members were Danny Alexander, Chris Huhne and David Laws.⁹ Stunell welcomed this initiative particularly as he was critical of the Liberals’ involvement in the Lib-Lab pact of 1977-78, stating: “as someone who had been on the outside at that point, all my experience in local government showed that the Liberals had completely misplayed their hand in that Lib-Lab pact.”¹⁰ By preparing in advance in early 2010 they were able to establish what type of inter-party co-operation was vital and what should be the party’s priorities therein.¹¹ It was clear that Stunell was not only regarded as having negotiating experience in the local government sphere but also could play the role as a trusted link between the parliamentary party and the party in the country. There were inevitably great pressures on the party leadership, including Stunell as Chief Whip, to make the key decision on coalition, not least because the financial markets were very febrile, but Stunell counselled caution. Speaking on the Sunday afternoon, after just four days of intensive sessions with the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party and party officials and with both Labour and Conservative parties: “we are all very tired. We need to take a deep breath and get this right. And we need to realise that from a public and media perspective there is a real, real difficulty legitimising Labour after they have lost the election so badly.”¹²

In the negotiations with the Labour team it was Stunell who kept stressing the importance of constitutional reform, for instance proposing setting up a new Commons committee to undertake the time tabling of government business. ¹³ At the next meeting with Labour Stunell is reported as asking “bluntly” how serious Labour was about delivering its negotiation commitments and “what guarantees it could give.¹⁴ Then, being described as a “wiry persistent man, he had irritated Peter [Mandelson] with his aggressive pointmaking and minilecture on the elective dictatorship” all of which provoked Mandelson to ask his colleagues, “Who is he?” Andrew Adonis had to inform Mandelson that Stunell was an ex-local government leader and had a reputation as the Lib Dem expert in coalition-mongering in hung local authorities.”¹⁵ Stunell was certainly persistent in the discussions with Labour, telling a later meeting that they needed to “get real” and to “raise your offer considerably if [they] wanted to ‘stay in the game’”. This again annoyed Peter Mandelson who texted Danny Alexander during the meeting, asking whether Andrew “might be a bit more civil so we could make progress”!¹⁶

He later commented on the negotiations:

“It wasn’t at all clear it would always be the Conservatives. The arithmetic was a real tease because if you added us and Labour together we would not have had an overall majority and therefore would have required either the active or passive support of another party. We had a discussion with the Labour Party in which we did point this out to them. They were very gung ho about us joining them, but I think they thought what they could get was a Lib-Lab pact, like it had been in 1978, where basically the Liberals simply went along with Labour in the Callaghan government.¹⁷

“When we said ‘The numbers don’t add up,’ they said ....’Don’t worry, we’ve got the nationalists’. Had any other basis for a deal been there then we might have explored what they meant by ‘We’ve got the nationalist.’”¹⁸

By contrast Stunell found the Conservatives “were falling over themselves to give the Liberal Democrats what they wanted. ... It would have been a pretty odd situation to have then turned away and said that’s not good enough.”¹⁹

He was immediately appointed as Under-Secretary in the Department of Communities and Local Government in which ministerial capacity he was responsible for what became the 2011 Localism Act which devolved a number of powers from central to local government. However, after just two years in post he was a victim of a reshuffle in July 2012, along with Sarah Teather, Nick Harvey and Paul Burstow. The reason given by Nick Clegg was that he wanted to give other deserving Liberal democrat MPs “a place in the sun” before the end of this parliament. In fact it was also to enable David Laws to return to government as Minister of State for Schools and also the Cabinet Office.²⁰

Stunell was awarded the OBE in 1995 for political service and was knighted in 2013. He was made a member of the Privy Council in 2012. He was created a Life Peer in 2015 following his retirement from the House of Commons. In the Lords he served on the Committee on Standards in Public Life, 2016-2022. As the party’s spokesman in the Lords on the Construction Industry, he accepted an invitation by Lord Newby, the party leader, to review the impact of Brexit on the construction industry.

Robert Andrew Stunell, Lord Stunell, born 24 November 1942; died 29 April 2024

References

1. Liberal party down by 1% and the SDP down by 2%.

2. Details of all matters relating to the inter-party negotiations regarding the merger between the Liberal and the Social Democratic parties are to be found in Merger - The Inside Story, Rachael Pitchford and Tony Greaves, Liberal Renewal, 1989.

3. Op cit pp 16/17.

4. Op cit pp 138/139.

5. See eg Ashdown Diaries, Volume II, Allen Lane Penguin Press, 2001, entry for 22 July, p 70; also entries for 22 October 1998, p 303; and for 10 November 1998, p 330.

6. Article, Rosa Prince, 25 April 2015, Daily Telegraph.

7. Charles Kennedy - A Tragic Flaw, Greg Hurst, Politicos 2006, pp 189 and 252; Hurst’s book is the source of much of the material on this period.

8. Hurst op cit, appendix E.

9. Politics Between the Extremes, Nick Clegg, The Bodley Head, 2016, p 175; Nick Clegg - The Biography, Chris Bowers, Biteback, 2011, p 223; 22 Days in May - The Birth of the Lib Dem - Conservative Coalition, David Laws, Biteback 2010, pp 14 et seq.

10. Op cit Daily Telegraph article.

11. David Laws’ 22 Days in May is important on this subject, pp 15-22.

12. Coalition, David Laws, Biteback 2016, pp 12-13.

13. 5 Days in May - The Coalition and Beyond, Andrew Adonis, Biteback, 2013, p 47

14. Adonis op cit, p 49.

15. Adonis op cit, p 50.

16. Adonis op cit, p 115.

17. For this period see: The Lib-Lab Pact - A Parliamentary Agreement, 1977-78, Jonathan Kirkup, Palgrave MacMillan, 2016; A House Divided - The Lib-Lab Pact and the Future of British Politics, David Steel, 1980; The Pact - The Inside Story of the Lib-Lab Government, 1977-78, Alastair Michie and Simon Hoggart, Quartet, 1978.

18. Daily Telegraph 2015 interview op cit. In fact Douglas Alexander stated publicly at the time that “Under no circumstances will we work with the SNP”.

19. Daily Telegraph, 2015, op cit.

20. Daily Telegraph, 2015, op cit.

Official portrait of Lord Andrew Stunell Photo: Chris McAndrew, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

For six months before the general election of 2010, Andrew Stunell, who has died aged 81, was among the Liberal Democrat MPs preparing for a possible hung parliament. When that result eventuated he was appointed by the party’s leader, Nick Clegg, to its team negotiating for a coalition, together with David Laws, Danny Alexander and Chris Huhne.

His approach was coloured by the 1977-78 Lib-Lab pact that sustained James Callaghan’s Labour government, when he felt that the Liberals misplayed their hand and failed to achieve benefits for the party. On the Sunday after the 2010 polling day, after two days of almost incessant discussion and debate, Stunell cautioned his colleagues against rushing the negotiations, with the “real, real difficulties in legitimising Labour after they have lost so badly”. From his trade union experience witn NALGO in the 1970s, he expected Labour “to have some really feisty negotiators” but “they just didn’t have anything. They were not there at all. When we said ‘the numbers don’t add up’, they said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got the nationalists.’” On the other hand he was “surprised that the Conservatives were prepared to come as far as they did in the negotiations”.

As the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Cheshire County council (1981-91) he had developed a widely accepted guide for party colleagues on councils with no overall party control. In 1988 he was a member of the Liberals’ negotiating team on the merger with the SDP that resulted in the emergence of the Liberal Democrats – though he alarmed colleagues by commenting that he enjoyed the process more than the end result.

In the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government that resulted in 2010, he was appointed parliamentary under-secretary in the Department for Communities and Local Government, but after only two years was reshuffled out, together with three other Liberal Democrat ministers. While at the department he helped to steer through the Localism Act, which devolved a number of powers from central to local government.

Born in Sutton, Surrey, Andrew was one of four sons of Trixie, who had been a Civil Service clerk, and Robert Stunell, a mechanical engineer. From Surbiton grammar he went to Manchester University and Liverpool Polytechnic to study architecture. Then came architectural posts with the Co-operative Wholesale Society in Manchester (1965-67) and the Runcorn New Town Development Corporation (1967-81). 

As a Baptist lay preacher he had a keen sense of social justice, and in 1968 he was appalled when Harold Wilson’s Labour government reneged on its promise to Kenyan Asians to have the right to come to Britain if Jomo Kenyatta’s government pressured them. Only the Liberal party opposed the government, and Stunell joined it.

He was on Chester city council (1979-90) in addition to his decade on the county council. From 1985 he was employed by the Association of Liberal Councillors, applying his experience nationally. Stunell fought his local Chester seat at the three general elections, 1979, 1983 and 1987, won by Margaret Thatcher as Conservative leader. It was a Labour/Conservative marginal and he struggled to poll a respectable third place vote. For the 1992 election, he was invited to put his name forward for the Liberal Alliance for the Hazel Grove seat in Greater Manchester, and reduced the Conservative majority to 929. 

The Stunell family then moved into the constituency before the 1992 election; at the municipal election that followed he gained a seat from Labour on the local Stockport council. In the 1997 general election he was elected with a majority of almost 12,000. Liberal Democrat MPs more than doubled to 46, and Stunell’s local government experience was invaluable as deputy chief whip and then chief whip (2001-06). Under his stewardship every Liberal Democrat MP voted against invasion of Iraq. 

Heading the private members’ ballot enabled him to introduce the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004, intended to make new buildings greener and safer. Stunell was also concerned at the way new MPs were expected to cope in a complex procedural and political environment, and was instrumental in getting induction courses set up for later intakes.

When he became an MP, he was pleasantly surprised at the size of the salary, having never previously looked it up, and he happily involved himself in the practical tasks at his local Methodist church, having switched from his former Baptist affiliation whilst in Chester. His interests included third world issues and astronomy. He was made OBE in 1995 and knighted in 2013. After leaving the Commons at the 2015 election he entered the Lords, and served on the Committee on Standards in Public Life (2016-22).

In 1967 he married Gillian Chorley, a music teacher who carried on her career. She survives him, along with their five children, Judith, Kari, Peter, Mark and Daniel, six grandchildren, and his brothers, John, Peter and Philip.

Robert Andrew Stunell, Lord Stunell, born 24 November 1942; died 29 April 2024

Photo: Keith Edkins, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Michael Steed was the epitome of intellectual rigour; this, coupled with a remarkable memory for detail, made him a formidable politician. Fortunately for Liberalism he realised: ‘in my late teens that liberalism, not socialism, must be at the core of a worthwhile and effective radical party’^[1] and he never wavered from that view. Michael had three particular strands to his politics, first was his active commitment to the promotion of his Liberal values, particularly international Liberalism, second, and more academic, was the development of psephology - the study of electoral processes - in which he was acknowledged to be one of the leading specialists; and third was a deep interest in Liberal history. Two of his specific campaigns were for gay rights and for European integration, but it was his awareness of the instinctive Liberal understanding of the human personality and its need for freedom, coupled with a deep distaste for Tory imperialism, the aggressiveness of the Tory right, and an awareness that on the issue of European integration, ‘Labour was easily the most reactionary and protectionist party’, that confirmed his commitment to Liberalism.^[2]

Born on 25^th January 1940 into a nominally Conservative family he discovered his political affinity for himself rather than inheriting it and somewhat precociously, and bravely, he derived his initial appreciation of liberalism by reading John Morley’s two volume biography of Gladstone. Even more precociously he re-founded the local Liberal association whilst still at school. Happily this coincided with Jo Grimond becoming the Liberal party leader and Steed found Grimond’s brand of left radicalism congenial. He admitted to going through a brief socialist phase ‘ as part of growing up  but became convinced that liberalism had to be at the heart of progressive and radical politics .^[3]

He won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and began by reading economics but switched to geography, which was particularly apposite for his later analyses of voting trends. It was whilst that he got involved in national politics having found himself on a delegation to a seminar run by the World Federation of Liberal and Radical Youth. In the time-honoured way of Liberal Party politics this quickly led to him becoming the national chair of the Union of Liberal Students with an ex-officio seat on the party’s National Executive and on the Liberal Party Council. He rapidly became involved in the radical causes that remained with him - and the Liberal party - thereafter: constitutional reform, European federalism, regional devolution, electoral reform, homosexual equality and anti-apartheid. It was whilst trying to deliver aid to the victims of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre that he was refused entry into South Africa by the regime.

Steed was an officer of the National League of Young Liberals during much of the rise of the radical Young Liberal movement - nicknamed the Red Guard by sections of the press - but he avoided the radical action that enveloped the party in public controversy. His contribution to a Liberal Democrat History Group meeting on this period gave no hint of any personal involvment with the Young Liberals involvement in direct action, often in conjunction with other left groups, over the Vietnam war, South African apartheid and Rhodesia’s white government’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, plus arguing for UK withdrawal from NATO and other targets of a newly radicalised youth culture. ^[4] On the other side those broadly defined as the party establishment were outraged at what they saw as vote losing actions at odds with party policy and the parliamentary process. The highly public divisions within the party came to a head at the 1965 Liberal Assembly in Scarborough and dragged on thereafter until, in December 1970, following the disastrous results at that year’s general election, the party leader, Jeremy Thorpe, set up a committee under the chairmanship of Stephen Terrell QC, the party’s candidate in Eastbourne, to examine the existing relations between the Young Liberal movement and other sections of the Liberal party, to take evidence and to make recommendations. Its report’s main recommendation was that membership of the party should only be through a constituency party.^[5] One of Steed’s criticisms of the report was that it was addressed to the party leader, Jeremy Thorpe, rather than to the party. He made a similar point in a speech at the time, saying that the party must shift attention away from personalities to a wide-ranging debate about ideology, principles and policies. ^[6]

Michael Steed leaflet 1967Even though Michael Steed was the Chair of the University Liberal Students during much of this time he was conspicuously absent from what were seen as its excesses and did not contribute to either of the two seminal Young Liberal publications of the period.^[7] In essence he was in the movement but not of it. With his more academic and analytical mind, and being somewhat older than the key leaders of the movement, the party’s slightly scurrilous magazine, Radical Bulletin,^[8] dubbed him  the venerable Steed . He commented on the period at a Liberal Democrat History Group seminar in 2010.^[9] However, when the Young Liberals were determined to test their policies and tactics out with the electorate, and were the prime movers of the party contesting the Brierley Hill by-election on 24 April 1967, Steed was the obvious choice as candidate. It was a quixotic campaign in a constituency that had not been fought by Liberals since 1950 and which, in fact, was not contested in the following 1970 election. He polled just 7.8% and forfeited his deposit.

During this period he had been a student of David Butler at Nuffield College, Oxford, but his rapidly increasing commitment to psephological research and analysis led him to abandon his PhD. In 1966 he went from Nuffield to Manchester University as a Lecturer in Government, a post he held until 1987, taking early retirement through ill health. Alongside his commitment to the Liberal party he developed a reputation as an expert and independent commentator on election results. He contributed the statistical analysis to the definitive Nuffield Study on each general election from 1970 to 2005, latterly with John Curtice. He also provided the annual analysis of local elections in The Economist from 1968 to 1991. Steed developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of even the smallest local council election and Vernon Bogdanor recounted that as a graduate student at Nuffield, studying local elections, he (Steed) would scan local newspapaers at breakfast. One morning he exclaimed loudly,  “Good heavens!” We asked what disaster had occurred. He replied that an independent had won a local by-election at Newbury and that this had not happened since 1905"!^[10]

In the course of analysing results he developed a more sophisticated method for calculating the swing between competing parties than that hitherto used by David Butler. The Steed Swing, he argued, coped better with three-party politics than  Butler Swing . He also had a deep awareness of electoral geography and, with John Curtice, was able to show that regional identities, coupled with historical influences, differentially affected the national outcomes.

Steed continued to contest elections and he was the Liberal candidate in the more promising Truro constituency at the 1970 general election but finished third. In 1973 he contested the Manchester Exchange by-election, a previously solid Labour seat with little Liberal activity. Steed polled 36.3% and came a creditable second, the Liberals constructing a community politics campaign from scratch, particularly concentrating on soliciting and dealing with electors’ individual problems - a tactic that the successful Labour candidate memorably labelled ‘instant compassion’. He then unsuccessfully fought Manchester Central in the February 1974 general election and Burnley in 1983. He also fought Greater Manchester North at the 1979 European parliament election.

Steed’s difficulty as a parliamentary candidate was not uncommon among academics fighting elections in that his warm personality was at times clouded behind his intellectualism. A very different side to Steed’s personality was in his bravura singing performances at the party’s Glee Club on the last evening of the annual party conference. He also contributed a number of skilful parodies and alternative words to old tunes, many of which are enshrined in the Liberator Songbook.^[11]

Steed was a prolific pamphleteer and the contributor of chapters to numerous books but never produced a major book under his own name. It may well have been, similar to his abandonment of his PhD thesis, that confining himself over a long period to a single subject bored him and he preferred to absorb and to utilise a wide range of knowledge.^[12] Equally eclectic was his support for a wide range of activism, from international campaigns to regional and local projects. His internationalism, his wide knowledge of European politics and his particular passion for French politics, led him to write a booklet, ‘Who’s a Liberal in Europe?’^[13] This was followed by the chapter, ‘The Liberal parties in Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom’ in a 1982 book,^[14] and also, in 1988 a chapter, jointly with Patrick Humphrey, ‘Identifying Liberal parties’ in 1988.^[15] Steed also took a leading role in the updating of the preamble to the Liberal Party Constitution in 1969. In 1976 he devised the system for electing the leader of the Liberal Party by the party membership rather than only by the MPs. In 1978 Steed was elected as President of the party, defeating Christopher Mayhew, a former Labour MP and a recent convert to the Liberal Party.

In 1970 he married Margareta Holmstedt, a Swedish Liberal who was a lecturer at Bradford University. They set up home in Todmorden the Pennine textile town on the border with Lancashire and thus roughly halfway between their two universities. Whilst living there he was elected to Todmorden Town Council serving from 1987 to 1991. They eventually drifted apart, separating in 1990 and divorcing in 2004. Margareta continued on the council and become its mayor 2010-11.

In 1982 I benefited personally from Steed’s electoral knowledge and his forensic skills. The Boundary Commission’s recommendations for Leeds had produced an unwinnable home constituency which partnered two strong Liberal wards with two very different wards which, though contiguous on the map, had only become part of Leeds at the local government reorganisation of 1974. The problem for the reviewers was that Leeds had eight constituencies but thirty-three wards. Understandably the Boundary Commission sought to combine five of the smaller wards in to a constituency as opposed to communities of interest. The Leeds Liberals made a submission opposing the proposals and Steed came to Leeds to present the case before the Inspector. He was formidable with a vast knowledge of the law and of precedents. In particular he pointed out that it was not obligatory to constrict all the wards within one local authority and that the Tyne Bridge constituency in the north-east bridged two local authorities. He therefore proposed that the outlying ward of Rothwell on the southern edge of Leeds could be included in a Wakefield constituency. The Commission was persuaded by him and the revised proposals produced the Leeds West constituency which the Liberal Party duly won in 1983. In 1983 Steed contributed the chapter on ‘The Electoral Strategy of the Liberal Party’ to a book on many aspects of the party.^[16]

The Alliance with the SDP from 1981 and the merger with that party in 1988 put Steed at odds with many of his Social Liberal colleagues. Whereas most of those colleagues opposed the links with the SDP, he took a different view and though he had reservations, he wrote:

I was one of those who did not find the actual transition from Liberal Party to Liberal Democrats easy; the merger process was made avoidably painful. But as a Grimondite Liberal, I never had any doubt as to the principle of merger with the SDP. I am a Liberal Democrat today in the hope of some further realignment.^[17]

In 1996 Steed contributed a chapter on ‘The Liberal Tradition’ to a book of essays. In the course of just twenty pages he sets out a brilliant and succinct essay on the essence of Liberalism.^[18]

In 1987 Steed he began to suffer a devastating neurological condition the physical effects of which severely curtailed his activities. The condition proved difficult to diagnose accurately. The illness ebbed and flowed and at times it seemed as if it would be imminently terminal. His mental faculties were unaffected and he remained as effective as ever and, In fact, he continued with many writing and speaking engagements, even though he was for many years confined to a wheelchair. He was commenting on Liberal history matters up to a matter of days before his death. Following his forced retirement from his Manchester lectureship, and finding it increasingly difficult to cope with steep hills of the Todmorden area, he returned to his native Kent and became active with the Canterbury Liberal Democrats. He was elected to the Canterbury City Council for a single term in 2008.

In 1999 he met Barry Clements, a master carpenter, at a men’s social meeting in Whitstable and they became long term partners and were formally joined in a civil partnership in 2023. With Barry’s solid and constant help they were able to spend time most years in the South of France. Barry survives him, as do his four sisters and his brother to all of whom he was very close. He died on 3 September 2023.

References

1. Why I am a Liberal Democrat, ed Duncan Brack, Liberal Democrat Publications, 1996.

2. Op cit

3. Op cit

4. Red Guard versus Old Guard? The influence of the Young Liberal movement on the Liberal Party in the 1960s and 1970s, Report by Graham Lippiatt on a Liberal Democrat History Group meeting on 12 March 2012. Journal of Liberal History 68, Autumn 2010.

5. Report of the Liberal Commission to the Right Honourable Jeremy Thorpe MP (Chair Stephen Terrell QC), 1^st July 1971.

6. The Guardian, 15 September 1969.

7. Blackpool Essays - towards a radical view of society, ed Tony Greaves, Gunfire Publications for the National League of Young Liberals, 1967, and Scarborough Perspectives, ed Bernard Greaves, National League of Young Liberals, 1971.

8. Radical Bulletin is still published as an insert within the fifty year plus long running magazine Liberator.

9. Journal of Liberal History 68, Autumn 2010.

10. Obituary, The Times, 16 September 2023.

11. Liberator Songbook, editions 1 to 25, Liberator Magazine, https://liberatormagazine.org.uk/

12. For a list of Steed s publications, see his Wikipedia entry, (accessed 3 January 2024); A list of his contributions to the Journal of Liberal History can be accessed via the Journal s website: https://liberalhistory.org.uk/people/michael-steed/

13. North West Community Newspapers, Manchester, 1975.

14. Moderates and Conservatives in Western Europe, ed R Morgan and S Silvestri, Heinemann Education, 1982.

15. Liberal Parties in Western Europe, ed Emil J Kirchener, Cambridge University Press 1988.

16. Liberal Party Politics, ed Vernon Bogdanor, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983.

17. Why I am a Liberal Democrat, ed Duncan Brack, Liberal Democrat Publications 1996.

18. The Liberal Democrats, ed D N MacIver, Prentice Hall/Wheatsheaf, 1996.

Photo: Keith Edkins, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Michael Steed, who has died aged 83, was one of the pioneers of psephology who worked with the political scientist and psephologist David Butler on many general election studies. He took an early interest in the significance of local elections, and for more than two decades provided an annual chart of those results to the Economist magazine, as well as contributing to the Observer and making television appearances on election nights.

A prominent Liberal party activist, he was the vice-chair of the National League of Young Liberals during its radical phase in the 1960s, frequently at odds with the party leader at the time, Jeremy Thorpe. He consistently advocated for gay rights, called for a federal Europe and proposed constitutional reform, including regional government. Steed did not just snipe from the wings but took on key roles in the party, becoming a member of the party executive and serving as its president (1978-79) under an election system he had devised and which the party backed.

Born in Ramsgate, Kent, to Norman Steed, a farmer, and Margaret (nee Cloke), Michael was the eldest of two boys and four girls. He attended St Lawrence College, a local independent school, following which, in 1959, he spent six months on the continent, which instilled a passion for Europe and for internationalism, before going to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge to study economics, switching to geography after his first year.

He had joined the Liberal party in 1958, but it was at Cambridge that he became active in national Liberal politics, and in 1960 was elected president of the national organisation for Liberal students. Involved in the anti-apartheid movement, he attempted to enter South Africa to deliver aid to the victims of the Sharpeville shootings, but was refused entry by the regime.

From 1963 to 1965 Steed undertook postgraduate research with Butler at Nuffield College, Oxford. He became Butler’s assistant, from 1964 to 2005 contributing, latterly with John Curtice, the statistical section to many of the long series of definitive books on each general election.

A further aspect of his work with Butler was in devising what he believed to be a more sophisticated formula for measuring the electoral swing between the major parties. Butler took the votes for all the parties whereas Steed believed that extracting only the Labour and Conservative votes provided a more accurate measurement of swing.

In 1966 Steed also began lecturing in government at Manchester University, a post that he held until his retirement due to ill health in 1987.

As vice-chair of the National League of Young Liberals from 1966 to 68, Steed demonstrated his skill at constructing a powerful case in debate, particularly in response to the attempts by Thorpe and other party bigwigs to discipline its youth movement. Steed’s comment on this was to state “the party must shift attention away from personalities to a wide-ranging debate about ideology, principles and policies”.

While in the senior party he was a popular participant in the end-of-conference Glee Club, for which he wrote a number of skilful parodies. I personally benefited from his advocacy and forensic skills when he persuaded the Boundary Commission, via an enquiry in Leeds, that legally it did not have to create constituencies only within the city council. As a consequence its changed proposals produced the winnable Leeds West seat for me in 1983.

Steed also fought difficult elections. In 1967 he contested the Brierley Hill by-election, largely backed by the Young Liberals, and lost his deposit. At the 1970 general election he contested the more promising constituency of Truro, but finished third. In 1973 he was the candidate in the Manchester Exchange byelection, a previously solid Labour seat with little Liberal activity. Steed polled 36.5% and came a good second, the Liberals building a community politics campaign from scratch, particularly concentrating on soliciting and dealing with electors’ individual problems – a tactic that the successful Labour candidate memorably christened “instant compassion”.

Steed unsuccessfully fought Manchester Central in the February 1974 general election and Burnley in 1983. He also fought Greater Manchester North at the 1979 European parliament election. His one election success came in a 2008 byelection for Canterbury city council but he chose not to defend his seat in 2011. Steed’s difficulty as a candidate was not uncommon among academics fighting elections in that his warm personality was at times hidden behind his intellectualism.

Towards the end of 1987 Steed had contracted a serious neurological disease that proved resistant to diagnose precisely and was thus difficult to treat. In 1970 he had married a Swedish Young Liberal, Margareta Holmstedt, and settled in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, but after they separated in 1990 he found it difficult to cope with the hilly terrain there and returned to Kent, settling in Canterbury. In 1999 he met Barry Clements, a master carpenter, at a men’s social meeting in Whitstable. They became partners, and were joined in a civil partnership earlier this year.

Steed and Margareta divorced in 2004. Barry survives him, as do his sisters, Corrinne, Sarah, Sue and Frances, and his brother, David.

Michael Steed, born 25 January 1940, died 30 August 2023

My political colleague, Richard Stokes, has died at the age of 100. Richard was a brilliant politician who only achieved an executive position at the age of 81 when he became the leader of Slough Borough Council as the Liberal head of a four party coalition. Born in Southport to Richard, a commercial traveller, and Leonora, (neé Sancto) he was brought up as a socialist. He was a loyal but somewhat wayward Labour party member, initially in Southport, where he began work as a junior clerk with the Southport Corporation. In 1940 he volunteered for the RAF and became a Radio Navigator. After the war he went to Manchester University where he obtained a BA in Social Administration. In 1950 he joined the Royal Cotton Commission, as a welfare and personnel officer. He followed this as a management appointments office with Littlewoods, Liverpool, Personnel Manager at Glaxo in Brentford, and Group Personnel Director for the Burton Group in 1974 in London, before becoming self-employed, based in Slough.

In Southport he was a neighbour of my family on the same council housing estate and was often on the doorstep to discuss the latest socialist policy idea with my father. Stokes had attended King George V School, the local state grammar school, but despite getting credits in all seven matriculation subjects, family economics prevented him from continuing his education. He never forgave the school for its lack of support for working class children who were unlikely to go on to Oxbridge and he later said to me, “Michael, that school was evil.”

In 1952 the Southport Labour party voted to have Labour candidates in all fifteen local wards and Richard was put up as a token candidate in the Birkdale West ward, the safest Conservative seat in the town. He still had to complete the statutory expenses return. He duly did so, listing “Two pence - the cost of a stamp to send in the return”! Also in 1952, together with other Southport Labour worthies (two of whom, Eric Moonman and Arthur Davidson, later became MPs), Stokes was short listed for the local candidature but withdrew after becoming aware that party HQ would not approve him if chosen. This was proven when in the same year he applied for the Blackpool South constituency but was prevented from going on to the shortlist by Labour HQ as “his views on defence policy were incompatible with national policy”.  He was not the typical statist socialist lefty but was much more libertarian and described himself as an “anti-nuclear, pacifist, republican.” It was not until the 1964 general election that he finally contested a parliamentary election, unsuccessfully fighting Spelthorne.

In 1978 Stokes moved to Slough. He joined the local Labour party and in 1983 was elected to the borough council. He soon became disillusioned and in 1987 he left the party stating that it “bore no resemblance to the party he knew from the north of England.” He was then successfully courted by John Clark, leader of the Slough Liberal party and was elected eight times as a Liberal. In 2004 Labour lost its majority on the council and, at the age of 81, Stokes put together a four party coalition which ran the council successfully for four years. He retired from Slough council in 2012 after twenty-nine years of service. In May 2018, at the age of 95, he spoke without notes at the memorial service for his old colleague former Labour and SDP MP, Eric Moonman with perfect recall of their friendship going back seventy years.

Stokes’ personal life was somewhat diffuse. His first marriage in 1943 was to Sarah (Sally) McNeil with whom he had two daughters, Lorraine (deceased January 2023) and Lesley (deceased 2006). He had a third daughter, Carolyn (Carrie) with whom he was in close contact over sixty years. He had three grandchildren and three great grandchildren. His final partner, for twenty-six years, was a schoolteacher, Elizabeth Streeter.  Aside from his political activities he was a fine poet and also a wine connoisseur - who had an extension built to his house to accommodate his extensive stock of good wine.

Richard Stokes, born 2 January 1923, died 22 April 2023.

Trevor Smith, who has died aged 83, was an influential figure in Liberal/Liberal Democrat and academic circles for 60 years, more as a "fixer" than as a frontline player. After an early involvement in electoral politics he was appointed a politics lecturer at Hull University in 1962, and rose to become vice-chancellor of Ulster University (1991-99). Throughout he stayed with his party and from 1997 was active as a life peer.

Born in the East End of London, Trevor was the son of Vera (nee Cross) and Arthur Smith, who took his family on his wartime military postings around Britain. Eventually he joined a business making toys and dolls, successfully enough to send Trevor to a succession of indifferent private and state schools.

After his father's business failed Trevor took O-levels, and his mother insisted that he embark on a job in insurance. He obtained A-levels through evening classes and entered the London School of Economics (LSE) to study government.

Given the low ebb the party was at in 1955, joining the Liberal society could be seen as a somewhat perverse move. He became the national chair of the Liberal student organisation and was the party's candidate in Lewisham West, south-east London, in 1959 - at 22 the youngest candidate in Britain. After a short spell working in advertising he obtained his first academic post later that year, as an assistant lecturer in politics at Exeter University.

In 1960 he married Brenda Eustace; they had two sons, Adam and Gideon, and divorced in 1973. He first met his eventual second wife, Julia Donnithorne (nee Bullock) - they married in 1979, and had a daughter, Naomi - when she was his assistant during his time as research officer (1960-62) at the Acton Society Trust, in effect the research wing of the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust (now the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust).

Then came his time at Hull, followed by a move in 1967 to a lectureship at what is now Queen Mary University of London. By 1989 he was senior vice-principal: ever forthright in expressing his views, he was involved in a number of controversial initiatives and was asked to resign and given a year's sabbatical. In 1991 he became vice-chancellor of the University of Ulster and moved with his family to Coleraine.

It was a brave job to take on, physically as well as academically, given the fraught security situation in Northern Ireland. It was described to him by colleagues as the "gulag". The university was by a long way the largest higher education body on the island of Ireland, with four sites distant from each other as the result of a merger.

Smith decided that its traditional, male-dominated and clannish senior management had to be transformed and, yet again, found himself embroiled in academic politics. It took him two years to replace the initial personnel with a more representative and talented mixture that included women and Roman Catholics. His own Anglo-Catholicism he saw as an advantage, since such high churchmanship was unknown in Northern Ireland and puzzled those who liked to put everyone into one or other religious category.

He embarked on a number of imaginative initiatives including establishing Incore, the International Centre for Conflict Resolution, with the United Nations University, Tokyo. He also wanted to establish a fifth Ulster University campus on the Belfast peace line between the Unionist Shankill and the Nationalist Falls Road, with entrances at each side.

Inevitably it was controversial, but Smith worked skilfully with key academics to have the idea accepted. He arranged for President Bill Clinton accompanied by Tony Blair, the prime minister, to cut the first sod on the site in 1998. Smith retired the following year, and it greatly saddened him that in 2002 the Springvale campus was cancelled.

During Smith's tenure as a chair of what is now the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (1987-99) he instituted a number of reforms, including its change of name and the broadening out of its range of directors to include more women, such as the journalist and broadcaster Elinor Goodman, and individuals already respected for their commitment to political reform, such as the democracy activist Pam Giddy.

For more than 50 years the trust had been the major financial supporter of the Liberal party and this continued, but with a greater emphasis on specific party initiatives, such as the highly effective Association of Liberal Councillors. It also developed a highly controversial commitment to assist the administration of territory controlled by African liberation movements.

With his appointment as a Lord Smith of Clifton in 1997 he resumed active Liberal politics after an interval of 35 years. He was not initially keen to take on the spokesmanship on Northern Ireland but was persuaded, and he developed good relationships with the minister, Peter Mandelson, and with Blair.

His long absence from the Liberal frontline did not inhibit his criticisms, including calling for the party leader, Nick Clegg, to resign in July 2014. He became increasingly immobile and retired from the Lords at the start of 2019.

Smith had a tendency to compensate for his difficult early education by emphasising his undoubted academic skills, and he was never afraid to tackle what he regarded as poor leadership and management. Though he was not a particularly easy colleague, his agile mind and intellectual capacity were respected.

He is survived by Julia, his three children, four grandchildren and one great-grandson.

Trevor Arthur Smith, Lord Smith of Clifton, academic and politician, born 14 June 1937; died 23 April 2021

For many years Eric Syddique's name was synonymous with the campaign for electoral reform and he served on the staff of the Electoral Reform Society for many years, taking over from the formidable Enid Lakeman as its secretary. He was a lifelong Liberal and later Liberal Democrat. He was elected six times to the Sevenoaks District Council from 1973 until he retired in 1995. He was also a member of the Eynsford Parish Council and served as Justice of the Peace for the County of Kent. He also served as Chairman of the Lewisham and Kent Islamic Centre.

Eric was never unduly concerned with personal advancement, preferring to be concerned with academic interests such as Chatham House and the Hansard Society. In particular he contributed many learned articles on electoral reform to specialist journals. He lived in the same modest house in Eynsford for over sixty years.

He was one of life's eccentrics. His father had had a garage and an upmarket car dealership in Bexley and Eric had access to very superior motor vehicles. In 1968 he drove a Daimler convertible coupé into his garage and never opened its doors again! By 2012 the garage had disappeared under vegetation. He then drove a 1963 Rover P4 which he abandoned on his drive until it was removed in 2017!

Notoriously incapable of doing any filing he lived alone in his bungalow becoming increasingly frail and surrounded by an ever mounting pile of books, documents and newspapers until a friend took over his care in 2010 and undertook a complete renovation of the bungalow and its garden.

He served for a time on the General Committee of the National Liberal Club and for many years he conducted the Club's STV elections.

Eric Mahmood Syddique, 1936-2020

I was sorry to hear of Harry Swain's sudden death. I bumped into him in Leeds City Centre earlier this year and briefly passed the time of day. I wish now that we had talked more.

I liked Harry even though we were daggers drawn politically. To me as a junior Liberal Councillor he was, with such luminaries as Albert King, Bill Merritt, Dick Knowles and Denis Matthews, a senior member of that honourable old Labour coterie to whom politics and the establishment of a Labour presence in the social and political structures of Leeds was a serious matter to be pursued with appropriate zeal and organisation. Moreover he was one of that diminishing band of activists in any party who perceive the role of organiser and "fixer" as an important and legitimate task. Harry's position as a senior Magistrate was sufficient public recognition and he rightly regarded that as a vital means of expressing his own social concern, and as an area of public service which he also made sure had its quota of Labour members.

I discovered that to those in the Labour party who found the rigid discipline of the oldtime Leeds Labour machine stifling, Harry was very much a hate figure, even being called at times Harry Swine, but he regarded such attitudes as an inevitable consequence of the task in hand, and he took pride in managing to run a tight ship in Leeds for much longer than proved possible in many other cities where the far left caused so much damage to the Labour cause in the 1980s. I never liked the Leeds Labour style, which I thought highly detrimental to the voluntary sector and to pluralism in the city, and, on the other side of the fence, I suffered from it both politically and personally, but I had to admire the efficiency of the machine and Harry's dedication to it.

Two anecdotes come to mind when thinking of Harry Swain. The first involves a former council colleague, Denis Pedder, who in the early days of the City Council Liberal Group was a very valuable member. However, Denis was always somewhat unpredictable and had a vicious streak. Eventually his eccentricity went beyond the bounds of acceptability and, unanimously, the Group decided that he had to be expelled. Shortly afterwards it was rumoured that he had applied to join the Labour party but I had no evidence, until one afternoon outside the Civic Hall, Harry Swain and Denis Matthews were passing, on their regular route from the party office in Queen Square. Seeing me Harry pulled up, reached into his inside pocket, pulled out Denis Pedder's membership application, and said to me, "Michael, we've enough of our own nutters without having yours as well!".

The second came in the aftermath of the 1979 City Council elections which left the Liberal Group, as expected, with the balance of power. The count took place the morning after polling day as the poll coincided with the parliamentary election which counted on the Thursday night. When it became clear that the Conservatives had lost their overall majority, their leader, Irwin Bellow, asked me and the Labour leader, George Mudie, to meet him in his office in the annexe at the rear of the main Civic Hall building. There Irwin conceded defeat and said that it was up to me and George to see whether some joint administration could take over. George and I agreed to consult our parties and to meet over the weekend. We then walked from Irwin's office across the first floor bridge to the main building. This bridge had glass sides and, looking down, I saw Harry and, as ever, Denis Matthews walking along below us. Harry looked up and saw us, so I instantly put my arm around George's shoulders and gave Harry the thumbs up! He went a deathly shade of white! As it happened the Labour party would not make any workable arrangement with the Liberals and put the Conservatives back in office for another - final - year.<

No doubt Harry thought that the subsequent Labour long dominance of the City Council well worth the price of one further year of the Tories!

Photo: Leeds Grammar SchoolPeter Sparling was the epitome of the dedicated and earnest public representative. He was a well-regarded Conservative politician who took on many of the mundane duties that were important to the functioning of the party. Never charismatic, Sparling was a loyal adjutant to Irwin Bellow during the latter's leadership of the Leeds City Council, so much so that when Bellow was suddenly catapulted into Margaret Thatcher's government in 1979 it was natural that the party would turn to Sparling's safe pair of hands to take over as leader. It was a difficult time with no party with a majority and with Labour sniping from the sidelines despite having turned down a coalition with the Liberals. He served as council leader until Labour won back control in May 1980. He served as a Councillor for Moortown ward, 1968-1987, when he was appointed an Honorary Alderman.

His committee skills were applied to many organisations in the City of Leeds. He was chairman of the governors of the Leeds Grammar School for eighteen years, seeing it through its merger with the Leeds Girls High School and its transition to the "Grammar School at Leeds" on its new site at Alwoodley. He was one of the founding board members of what became Opera North and chaired its Friends organisation for twenty years. Whilst leader of the Leeds City Council he agreed with the Grand Theatre board to invite Leeds' twin city, Dortmund, to send its opera company to put a week of opera to celebrate the theatre's centenary. The company duly came with some two hundred staff at an astronomical cost! Sparling commented to Councillor Michael Meadowcroft, whose idea it had been, that if he had known what it would cost he "would never have let him get away with it" and that he had had to hide some of the expenditure under different budget heads!

He was also a non-executive director of the Leeds Dental Health Authority from 1992 to 1997, and a director for several years of the West Yorkshire Playhouse board. In recent years he was a very active governor of the Bardsey Primary School. He held many offices within the Conservative party, including chairman and later president of the Elmet and Rothwell constituency party. For many years he was a season ticket holder at Leeds United.

He was awarded an MBE in 2014 for his contribution to the arts, education and the community. He leaves a wife, Bettie, a daughter, Helen, and a son, James.

Peter Norman Sparling, born 24 December 1933, died 10 January 2019.

Cyril Smith Photo: Rodhullandemu derivative work: Ukexpat, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Sir Cyril Smith, who has died aged 82, was the Liberal and then the Liberal Democrat MP for Rochdale from 1972 to 1992, and a much more complex individual than his bluff, no-nonsense northerner image would suggest. His size ensured that he was instantly recognisable, and his forthright views, expressed in a broad Rochdale accent, gave him considerable media coverage, particularly when criticising his own party.

He rarely withheld comments on individuals, whether friend or foe, but was hurt by criticism of himself, including being curiously sensitive to allusions to his girth. He changed party three times without ever changing his views, and made overtures to the then prime minister, James Callaghan, in 1977 urging the formation of a centre party.

He was dismissive of social status as a route to influence but a supporter of the royal family. He portrayed himself as an individualistic local MP, deeply critical of parliamentary flummery and opposed to the whip system, but accepted appointment as the then Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe's chief whip in 1975.

Efforts by Private Eye to implicate Smith in scandalous activities with boys never stuck and appeared to have no effect on his electability. A committed member of the Unitarian Church, he nonetheless was the only Liberal MP to vote for the reintroduction of hanging.

Along with a sister and a brother, all children of Eva Smith, Cyril never knew his father, and the family struggled to survive in a one-up one-down Rochdale terraced house, cooking meals on the open fire, trekking 300 yards to the toilet, and, occasionally, burning the furniture to keep warm. The house next door fell down in 1945, so the family moved to a slightly larger one, which became his lifelong home.

After Rochdale grammar school for boys, he went to work in a tax office. A colleague got him involved in the Liberals' 1945 general election campaign, and a speech he made at an open-air meeting cost him his job. At the Liberal party assembly in 1948 he spoke out against conscription and, having made an impression, became Stockport's full-time Liberal agent. His candidate, having narrowly saved his deposit at the 1950 general election, advised Smith to join the Labour party.

In 1952 he became Rochdale's youngest councillor and Labour's first winner in the Falinge ward, which included the house his family had abandoned. Under Labour, Independent and Liberal banners, he never lost an election in that ward, which he represented until 1975 when he resigned, saying he had not been "pulling his weight".

Smith achieved a childhood aim in 1966 when he became Rochdale's mayor. Fiercely loyal to his mother until her death in 1994, he enjoyed the paradox of her being his mayoress while she was still the town hall charwoman.

However, after a dispute with his Labour colleagues over council house rents, he resigned from the party, forming an independent group with four other ex-Labour councillors. When Labour took control of the council four years later, they removed Smith from every position of authority, including 29 school governors' boards.

Smith rejoined the Liberals in 1968 and, though far from the unanimous choice, became the party's 1970 general election candidate. He suggested later that the local party's parliamentary election record had been "abysmal for many years", although the party had taken reasonable second places, in one instance with Ludovic Kennedy as its candidate. However Smith added 5,000 votes, again coming second.

In 1972 the sitting Labour MP, Jack McCann, died and it was obvious that Smith was the only feasible Liberal byelection candidate. An army of party workers arrived. Some, such as myself and Tony [now Lord] Greaves, met slightly shamefacedly in the streets of Rochdale, campaigning for a candidate regarded as uncomfortably to their right, "why are we here?" I asked Tony. "Because we've got key local elections next May," he replied. Smith romped home with an 11% swing and immediately, national Liberal poll ratings almost doubled. He was to hold the seat relatively comfortably at five subsequent general elections. As chairman of Smith Springs (1963-87), employing some 70 people, Smith was attacked from the left for being a capitalist while preaching industrial participation, but, as his autobiography, Big Cyril (1977), made clear, his management style was consistent with his politics. He noted that the company's works council voted unanimously against joining the Transport and General Workers Union.

He found himself embroiled in further controversy through his association with Turner and Newall, a Rochdale-based company involved in the manufacture and marketing of asbestos. Smith was its consistent advocate in parliament, even after a clear link between asbestos and the cancer mesothelioma was established. A year after speaking in support of the firm in 1981, he declared the ownership of 1,300 its shares.

Smith was a difficult colleague. His tendency to shoot first and to qualify later was exasperating, although he never seemed bothered to have embarrassing statements quoted back later. Addicted to self-publicity, he knew that criticising his own party guaranteed coverage. Another technique was to threaten - but not follow through - resignation from any current position if a particular course of action was taken. Notoriously dismissive of what he saw as stifling parliamentary rules, he frequently opted out of participation in the Commons for weeks on end.

He tended towards authoritarian views on all issues except education, and his friendship with James Anderton, the sometime Manchester chief constable who espoused controversial "traditional" values, influenced his law and order pronouncements.

In the mid-70s Smith was chief whip during the final months of Thorpe's leadership of the party, which came to an end over a blackmail plot arising from allegations of a homosexual affair with a former model, Norman Scott. Smith's admiration for Thorpe collapsed when he discovered that vital information had been kept from him. His disillusion was compounded when he was virtually sacked by Thorpe in a bizarre, late-night call to his hospital ward, where he was recuperating from illness. Smith formally resigned two weeks later.

At the leadership election that followed Thorpe's resignation in 1976, he strongly supported John Pardoe against the eventual winner, David Steel. Typically, he announced that he would not be campaigning in any constituency that voted for Steel.

Smith was at first opposed to the alliance with the Social Democratic party, stating in June 1980 that the Liberals were being taken for mugs and that any fourth party should be "strangled at birth". But by September 1981 he was openly supporting the alliance. By 1983 he was calling for the appointment of a deputy leader, stating that "the Liberal party has reached the stage where to disagree with David Steel is disloyalty, and where one man is able to dictate ... on the basis of personal loyalty exactly what the party must do". In March 1985, however, Smith was again talking about the Liberal party's "big blunder" in not stopping the SDP.

In 1992 he retired from parliament. He did not go to the House of Lords - whether a peerage was offered and refused, or simply not offered, is unclear - but he received a knighthood in 1988.

Smith's personal style was described by the political journalist Andrew Roth as that of an "undisciplinable but formidable Poujadist". For Susan Crosland, wife of the former Labour minister Tony Crosland, he was "the prototype community politician, the populist". This prevented him from using his undoubted intelligence and his communication skills to achieve far more. His success in transcending the disadvantages of his birth without acquiring any airs and graces, and without in any way abandoning his roots, seemed nevertheless to leave him with a curious inferiority complex. Perhaps his most revealing comment was made in 1985: "I don't believe that I have ever been acceptable to the Liberal party establishment. I was handy to trot out to attack the Labour vote because I was working class."

He is survived by his brother Norman. His sister, Eunice, predeceased him.

Sir Cyril Smith, politician, born 28 June 1928; died 3 September 2010

See also The Guardian.