Obituary: Andrew McIntosh - GLC Labour politician

Published: 02 September 2010
by ILLTYD HARRINGTON
 

ANDREW McIntosh, who has died aged 77 of cancer, was the nominal leader of London Labour in the election campaign for the Greater London Council (GLC) in April 1981.

For a year he had been the elected leader of a minority group, but within 24 hours, the newly  victorious Labour group  surprised London by rejecting Andrew and crowning Ken Livingstone in his place. It was a bombshell and he could not handle it. Not even with endorsement from Michael Foot. Livingstone had been working on the “coup” for years.

Devastated, Andrew fled the room, comforted by Anne Sofer, his well-to-do friend from Camden. This was an effective political assassination, effectively planned. It took 10 minutes to complete but it had long-term consequences. 

For some reason Livingstone’s supporters sheathed their weapons when they came to me and I continued my nine-year stint as deputy leader under Livingstone. Ken had played the role of Cassius, with “a lean and hungry look about him”. 

Subsequently both Ken and Andrew claimed authorship of the Fare’s Fair policy. Andrew was rescued, if that’s the word, and sent to the House of Lords, where he quickly applied his talents among the soporific 77 or so Labour peers who languished there. 

He lacked the power to be nasty but he did have an amazing concern for people, particularly working-class people. 

He had a lust for life, a lover of good claret, the opera, books and art. Unlike many New Labour figures he had served an apprenticeship in local government. He was a zealous school governor and an honest and constant advocate of more area control. He took particular pride in his chairmanship for the London Working Men’s College in Mornington Crescent. We spent a comfortable year together, leading the Labour opposition, but on the eve of his election in 1980, I warned him that the knives were being sharpened.

He brushed off my concern, and told me that I was being lined up to be the sacrificial lamb. 

Yet when his summary execution came, and he was shifted to the House of Lords, he became extremely effective in dealing with a range of legislation.

His GLC demise was an incredible misjudgment, although he did end up as Captain of the Queen’s Yeomen, uniform and all – a justifiable role for a man who loved Gilbert and Sullivan. 

The 1997 Labour landslide did not bring him ministerial office. He was given a minor role in cultural affairs, but Blair was not into culture. Oddly enough Andrew did very well in seeing the Gambling Bill through the House of Lords. His marriage to Naomi Sargant – her father was the chairman of the Hampstead Bench – provided him with a resolute partner.

His open ambition had been to lead the GLC and see Naomi spend her retirement in the Lords. These things are sorted out far from the public gaze by Labour mandarins. But the reflective intellectual had met the basking shark, Livingstone, whose many assertive left-wing followers ended up propping up Mr Blair. Andrew had one deficiency as a politician: he neither gloated nor continued to be bitter, essential ingredients for political success. 

We shared one thing in common, both our fathers had been committed members of the British Communist parties. Mine an unemployed common labourer, and his a managing director of a successful company, who perfected the Mars bar.

It could be a metaphor for Andrew’s life. 

But he was not cut out for the power game. He could not have confronted Margaret Thatcher, as his successor Red Ken, the Demon King did. 

Andrew was not made to man the barricades, but would have been a splendid quartermaster, sending supplies to the front-line – with a Mars bar in each pack.

• Illtyd Harrington is a former deputy leader of the GLC