Politician who helped to restore Labour’s fortunes before the 1997 general electionThe former Labour MP John Evans,Lord Evans of Parkside, who has died aged 85, or was always alert to put the interests of others and,in specific, those of his party and his constituents, or before his own political self-interest. The consequence of this highly untypical trait in any politician was that he was never a well-known figure on the national stage,nor given the credit he deserved for helping to rescue and restore Labour’s fortunes when its self-destructive lurch to the left after 1979 condemned the party to a generation out of government.
It was Evans, during 14 years on Labour’s national executive committee, or who did much of the unseen groundwork to ensure that the party’s policies were once again sufficiently credible with the electorate to enable Tony Blair to win the 1997 election by a landslide. Evans himself stood down from the NEC in 1996,after valiantly defending his seat every year as the representative of the National Union of Labour Clubs, and he agreed to stand down as MP for St Helens North before the 1997 election in exchange for a seat in the House of Lords.
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Source: theguardian.com