Dick Leonard, Europhile Labour MP, journalist with the Economist and political biographer – obituary

 

He supported Anthony Crosland’s Labour leadership bid and defied his party to vote to join the EC before becoming a respected author

 

By Telegraph Obituaries 4 July 2021 • 9:00pm

 

Dick Leonard, who has died aged 90, was a Labour MP who defied the whips and voted to join the EC, an influential journalist with The Economist and in Brussels, and the author of popular biographies of prime ministers from Walpole to Blair.

 

Though MP for Romford for less than four years, Leonard – an effective debater in the House – made his mark as PPS to Anthony Crosland, one of Labour’s leading radical thinkers.

 

He promoted Crosland’s candidacy for the deputy leadership in 1972 and the leadership four years later; tried unsuccessfully for Crosland’s seat at Grimsby after his death in 1977; and edited the 50th anniversary edition of Crosland’s 1956 classic The Future of Socialism.

By then Leonard had concluded that Crosland, Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey had ruined each other’s chances of being Labour’s great reforming leader by competing for the loyalties of centre-Right MPs. He had always known that, alone of the three, Crosland did not want the job badly enough.

Leonard first encountered Crosland, 12 years his senior, in the 1950s at a Fabian Society lecture in which Crosland debunked Sidney and Beatrice Webb, historically the mainstays of the group. Within months of Leonard entering the Commons in 1970, Crosland, then shadow environment secretary, appointed him his PPS. Their friendship survived Leonard voting to join the Common Market while Crosland abstained.

When Crosland, by then Foreign Secretary, suffered a fatal stroke in February 1977, Leonard wrote a highly personal tribute for The Economist. Crosland hung on for several days, and Leonard tweaked the article to say he had been “struck down” rather than “died”; it nevertheless read like an obituary with Crosland still, just, alive. His wife, the journalist Susan Barnes, had fortunately given her approval.

Richard Lawrence Leonard was born at Pinner in Middlesex on December 12 1930, the son of a tobacconist. During the war he was evacuated to Banbury. From Ealing Grammar School – where he was an obsessive chess player – he won a place at LSE, but it was conditional on his completing his National Service; as a conscientious objector who was detailed to carry out clerical work at the Electricity Board, he lost his place and instead trained at London University Institute of Education, teaching for two years after qualifying.

Leonard joined the Labour Party in 1947, and in 1955 became deputy general secretary of the Fabians; he worked closely with Crosland and others on the intellectual Right of the party, setting up the Young Fabians in 1960. 

That year he began a new career in journalism, writing and broadcasting. He coupled it after a time with taking an MA in Social Sciences at the University of Essex; graduating in 1968, he stayed on as a senior research fellow until his election to Parliament.

Leonard fought Harrow West in 1955, then before the 1970 election was selected to succeed the retiring Labour MP Ron Ledger at Romford. He held the seat by 2,760 votes as a late swing to the Conservatives put Edward Heath into power.

He introduced Bills to involve council tenants in the management of their estates, and for life peers to “cease to be entitled to the rank and style of barons” – in other words, remain plain Mr or Mrs. The first of these was backed by some Conservative councils.

Leonard campaigned for political parties to be part-funded by the taxpayer, and early in 1974 promoted a Bill for the Commons to be televised; it was defeated by 189 votes to 164.

When Heath asked the House in October 1971 to approve his application to join the EC, Leonard was among Labour rebels – led by Jenkins – who voted with the government. He said he had fought the previous election for going in on the right terms, and he would have supported a Labour government in recommending the deal Heath had secured. The motion was carried by 356 votes to 244, with 69 Labour MPs, including Leonard, supporting the Government and 19, including Crosland, abstaining.  

Jenkins’s lieutenant Bill Rodgers told Leonard that Crosland had committed a betrayal in not voting to join, and tried to have him voted off the Shadow Cabinet for being “indecisive”. Crosland retorted: “This is the first issue on which I’ve been indecisive, because I don’t care terribly about it.” He kept his place.

In April 1972 Jenkins resigned as shadow chancellor and deputy Labour leader in protest at the party’s pledge to hold a referendum on Europe. Crosland was in Japan, and before he could get back Harold Wilson had given the job of shadow chancellor – which Crosland coveted – to Healey.

Leonard was waiting for Crosland at the airport with a statement saying he would stand for deputy leader. His efforts to rally support were frustrated by Rodgers persuading 40 Jenkins supporters to vote tactically for Edward Short. Crosland – who Jenkins’s aides claimed had “spoiled things for Roy”, finished third, behind Short and Michael Foot.

Leonard had fallen out with the Romford party by resisting pressure to vote against the EC, and with his majority at risk from boundary changes he looked elsewhere.

He thought he had plenty of time, but Heath – disastrously – called a snap election in February 1974, seeking a mandate against the striking miners, and Leonard was left high and dry. The Conservative Michael Neubert, whom he had defeated in 1970, took Romford by 3,073 votes from a fresh Labour candidate.

Leonard joined The Economist as home affairs editor, soon becoming assistant editor. He held the post for 11 years, writing authoritatively on a range of issues as Labour struggled in office before giving way to Margaret Thatcher.

When Wilson called his EC referendum in 1975, Leonard campaigned to stay in alongside Crosland, whose past scepticism made his call for Britain to remain the more effective.

The following spring Wilson retired. Leonard set out to “gather the troops” for a Crosland leadership challenge, despite his candidate’s ambivalence. He finished last of five in the first ballot with 17 votes, James Callaghan eventually defeating Foot.

Leonard tried for other seats, despite writing that British MPs were “the most overworked and inefficient in the world”. After Crosland’s death, the strongly anti-EC Grimsby party preferred Austin Mitchell, who held the seat against the odds. The Fabians elected Leonard their chairman for 1977-78 as a mark of respect.

When Jenkins, Rodgers, David Owen and Shirley Williams broke away to found the SDP, Leonard went with them, playing a largely backroom role.

He spent more time in Brussels, eventually moving there as a visiting professor at the University of Brussels, EU correspondent of The Observer (from 1989 to 1997) and correspondent for Europe magazine. He freelanced from Brussels until 2009, and after the 2016 referendum wrote a column headed: “How Labour could still win – and annul Brexit”.

From 1992 Leonard produced The Economist Guide to the EU, translated into 10 languages. But his legacy is his trilogy, A Century of Premiers: Salisbury to Blair (2004), 19th Century Premiers: Pitt to Rosebery (2008), and 18th Century Premiers: Walpole to the Younger Pitt (2010). He followed this in 2013 with the acclaimed The Great Rivalry: Disraeli and Gladstone.

His other books include Elections in Britain (1968), which ran to five editions; The Backbencher and Parliament (1972); Paying for Party Politics (1975); The BBC Guide to Parliament (1979); The Socialist Agenda (1981); Replacing the Lords (1995); Eminent Europeans (1996); and Anthony Crosland and New Labour (1999).

Leonard chaired the Library Advisory Council, and was senior adviser to the Centre for European Policy Studies and senior research associate at the Foreign Policy Centre.

In 1960 Dick Leonard met Irène Heidelberger, a future expert on post-war German literature, on the croquet lawn during a summer school at Beatrice Webb House; they married in 1963. She survives him along with their daughter and son.

 

Dick Leonard, born December 12 1930, died June 24 2021