ABSTRACT
In the last week of February 1984, a young back-bench Labour MP spent the day campaigning at a parliamentary by-election in Chesterfield before returning to London that evening.1 To be sure, the MP had family reasons for being there: his father-in-law was a friend of Labour’s candidate. It was, however, something of a surprise that he should have made the journey north: politically at odds with the candidate, it was a visit he could have easily avoided. In all probability, despite doubts about the contestant’s views, the MP felt an obligation to contribute. In so participating, the MP, Tony Blair, offered what was probably the only, albeit limited, practical support he gave to the career of the veteran leftwinger Tony Benn, who was duly re-elected to the Commons on 1 March that year. Later, Blair’s judgement about the period was savage: ‘while I was growing up in the Labour Party and he [Ken Livingstone] and Arthur Scargill and Tony Benn were in control of the Labour Party they almost knocked it over the edge of the cliff into extinction.’2
