England<\/a>, and acclaimed biographies of John Wesley, David Lloyd George and the Devonshires.<\/p>\nAlastair Campbell wrote on X: \u201cVery sad. Labour through and through, a fine mind and gifted writer, a loyal and hard working deputy to Neil at a vital time in Labour history, and a critical friend to New Labour. Sheffield Wednesday to the very end! RIP Roy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hattersley\u2019s brother-in-law, Norman Pearlstine, said:\u2002\u201cRoy was one of the most intellectually curious politicians I ever met.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition to writing frequently for the Guardian, he wrote more than 20 books, including thoughtful studies of Catholicism in Britain, Lloyd George and the Edwardians.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoy also displayed a humorous touch after his dog Buster killed a goose in one of London\u2019s royal parks and Roy was fined. The dog\u2019s encounter with the goose led to the publication of Buster\u2019s Secret Diaries (as discovered by Roy Hattersley), written in the dog\u2019s voice. The book, in which Buster claimed he had acted in self-defence, was a bestseller that was subsequently translated into several languages.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the 2010 general election, Hattersley offered some words of advice in a newspaper article to newly arrived MPs. He wrote: \u201cThe House of Commons is workshop, not shrine \u2026 without clear convictions life at Westminster is a boring waste of time. With them it is a great and glorious adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hattersley was also a visiting fellow of Harvard\u2019s Institute of Politics and of Nuffield College, Oxford. In 2003 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.<\/p>\n
He was born into a Labour family in Sheffield in 1932 and had strong Yorkshire roots. He was a supporter of Sheffield Wednesday football club and Yorkshire County cricket club.<\/p>\n
He gained a scholarship to Sheffield City grammar school and went to the University of Hull, where he studied economics and participated in student politics.<\/p>\n
After graduating he worked for a Sheffield steelworks and then for two years for the Workers\u2019 Educational Association.<\/p>\n
Among his first forays into politics was serving as chair of the housing committee when he was a member of the Sheffield city council.<\/p>\n
He was renowned for being a longstanding supporter of the Common Market and Britain\u2019s role in the European Economic Community.<\/p>\n
In 1981, Hattersley founded Labour Solidarity to help prevent the break-up of the Labour party, famously declining to join the MPs who left to form the short-lived Social Democratic party.<\/p>\n
In 2017, he declared in an article for the Observer: \u201cThe Labour party faces the greatest crisis in its history. Momentum \u2013 a party within the party which is dedicated to moving Labour to the far left of the political spectrum \u2013 is on the point of winning control of Labour\u2019s policy, programme and constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hattersley lived in Derbyshire with his wife, Maggie Pearlstine.<\/p>\n
In an interview with the Lady, Hattersley said his greatest influence was his mother, Enid, who was a Labour councillor. He said: \u201cShe was a very dominant, very positive, aggressive figure. I was always closer to my father, but he was very gentle, unlike my mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe would never say you could do better, just how badly you were doing. And that stimulated me to do better. I think she had a painful, but very important influence on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked when he is at his happiest, he said: \u201cWhen I\u2019m writing. Especially when I\u2019m here in Derbyshire, as I am now with the dog sleeping at my feet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roy Hattersley, the former Labour deputy leader and author, has died at the age of 93. Keir Starmer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-639044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}