|
Hugh McCartney, who has died aged 86, was a quiet, moderate soft-left Scottish trade union loyalist. During his 17 years in the House of Commons for the Clydeside seats of Dunbartonshire East, Dunbartonshire Central, and Clydebank and Milngavie, one of his principal causes lay in trying to save shipbuilding jobs on the Clyde. His best-known opponent came from the same arena, though from further on the left - Jimmy Reid, the Communist shipbuilders' leader, who stood against him in his first general election, in 1970.
Born in Glasgow in 1920, the son of John McCartney, a tram driver who suffered a serious leg injury at work, Hugh was educated at John Street senior secondary school and then at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow. At 14, he joined the Independent Labour Party's Guild of Youth at the same time he began his five-year apprenticeship in the textile industry. He joined the Labour Party when he was 16.
When war came, he moved into aircraft engineering, at Rolls-Royce in Coventry (1939-40), where he met and became a lifelong friend of future Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) leader Jack Jones. Then he returned to Glasgow (1941-42) before going into the RAF as an aero-engine fitter for five years, eventually returning to Rolls-Royce. He became the sales representative of Wilkins and Denton, an eventual subsidiary of the GKN group specialising in safety footwear, from 1951 till 1970; his father's accident left him determined to campaign on safety at work and to improve conditions for disabled people. It was in 1955 that he began his 15-year stint on Kirkintilloch town council, followed by five years on Dunbartonshire county council from 1965.
In the election that saw him enter parliament, Edward Heath became the new Conservative prime minister, and in June 1971 the government refused a £6m loan to Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) in order to press it into reorganisation by trade and industry secretary John Davies. McCartney described the consequent threat of bankruptcy, with little other employment available, as "the biggest disaster in Scotland for years", and lambasted as a "damned insult" the prime minister's refusal to discuss it with him and other Glasgow Labour MPs. McCartney remained a staunch supporter of the UCS workers during the period of the 16-month work-in organised by Reid and other shop stewards, till the government was forced to abandon its policy of non-intervention.
Reid's most successful challenge to McCartney came in the February 1974 election contest for Dunbartonshire Central, when he gained third place. Eight members of the General Council of the Scottish TUC criticised McCartney for the language he used against Reid, whose support fell away for his third and last attempt to displace the Labour member, in the second election of 1974. After a further redrawing of boundaries in 1983, McCartney represented Clydebank and Milngavie for his final parliament, throughout which he was Labour's regional whip for Scotland.
In the Commons he attracted little public attention: even after he had been there for two years, he was blocked from an MPs' telephone booth by moustachioed Tory MP Sir Gerald Nabarro as a possible "stranger of evil intent". But he did enjoy respect for speaking only when he had something worthwhile to say, as in helping to secure the passage of the Health and Safety at Work Act in July 1974, and performed the significant tasks of secretary of the Scottish group of MPs, chairman of the TGWU parliamentary group, and co-chairman of the Scottish Grand Committee before becoming a whip.
In addition to employment, he was very concerned with housing and social conditions, and in retirement, from 1997 to 1999, he was the director of the East Dunbartonshire Initiative for Creative Therapy and Social Care.
He is survived by his trade unionist wife Margaret, his two daughters, Irene and Margaret, and his son Ian, chairman of the Labour Party and MP for Makerfield, Wigan.
· Hugh McCartney, engineer and politician; born January 3 1920; died March 1 2006
|
