Alex Lyon

Alex Lyon   (barrister, politician)
Born	Alexander Ward Lyon 15 October 1931
Died	30 September 1993 (Age 61)
Alma mater	University College London
Spouse	• Hilda Arandall (m. 1951 divorced) • Clare Short
Member of Parliament for York In office 31 March 1966 - 13 May 1983

Alex Lyon (15 October 1931 – 30 September 1993) was a British Labour Party politician, who was elected Member of Parliament for the marginal City of York in 1966, having first fought the seat in 1964.

Alex Lyon was Minister of State at the Home Office in Harold Wilson's government from March 1974 to April 1976, but, as a radical, was sacked by incoming PM Jim Callaghan.

Second marriage

In 1981, Alex Lyon married Clare Short, a civil servant whom he had worked with whilst at the Home Office. Clare Short herself later became a Labour MP and cabinet minister, winning Birmingham Ladywood on 9 June 1983, the same day that Lyon lost his seat in York.

Taken ill

In 1993, Clare Short was called away from the Labour party conference to be told her husband was very ill and likely to die.

In her 2005 book "An Honourable Deception? New Labour, Iraq, and the Misuse of Power", Short described how

"after losing his parliamentary seat, he moved from being a senior Labour MP to running my constituency office where he gave me enormous support as well as bringing great experience to the task.

"Later he decided to return to the Bar, but after a time got himself into various difficulties and I began to suspect that either he was suffering a deep depression or mental deterioration.

"The next few years were very difficult as he engaged in strange, inexplicable behaviour. He gradually fell out with family and friends and stayed home with our St Bernard called Fred and would deal with no one but Fred and me."

Alex Lyon died in Milton Keynes in September 1993 from Alzheimer's disease, aged 61.

Obituary

Tam Dalyell wrote Alex Lyon's obituary in the Independent:

In the House of Commons there is a thin line between those considered to be men of principle and those considered difficult and awkward colleagues. For a number of senior members of the Wilson government, such as Dick Crossman, Alex Lyon was perceived as a difficult man - a very difficult man indeed, obstinate and stubborn and not sufficiently sensitive to the political needs of the hour.

For most of his contemporaries, Lyon was a man of marked principle - and I am sure that his contemporaries were right about him and senior ministers were wrong. He did exceptionally well to win York against the popular and promising Conservative MP Charles Longbottom in 1966. In the late 1960s such was Lyon's standing among members of the 1964 and 1966 parliamentary intake that we thought of him as a possible future leader of the Labour Party.

An event which made a seminal contribution to Lyon's political perceptions was the situation of the Kenyan Asians. The number of immigrants from Kenya had risen steadily each month throughout the winter of 1967-68. Some 13,000 had come to Britain in the first two months of 1968, which was twice as many as in the whole of 1965. As things got worse and worse in Kenya and pressure increased on the Asians from the new Kenyan government, signs of panic began to appear. The number of immigrants arriving at Heathrow stretched to two or three hundred over a day; they had little money and not much prospect of jobs. Almost all of them were homeless.

The tabloid press carried huge pictures, which were both lurid and exaggerated the extent to which the Kenyan Asians were drawing bountiful assistance from the social services. There were endless stories of descriptions of boat- loads of illegal immigrants being smuggled ashore on isolated beaches on the south coast of England where they were left stranded. Southall, in west London, and Bradford rapidly became centres of immigration as the Kenyans congregated in areas where their fellow countrymen had already settled. Housing and education authorities expressed public concern that they were quite unable to cope with the influx. In April 1968 Enoch Powell made his notorious speech on the Tiber and race and, to the dismay of the Parliamentary Labour Party, dockers marched to Parliament to support Powell.

One man above all others in Parliament resisted the prejudice and acted as a focal point - as he had in relation to Rhodesia - for resistance and standing up for what most of us knew in our heart of hearts was right. That man was Lyon. We will never forget the inspiration that he gave those who resisted caving in to prejudice by voting against the government; nor the respect that he evoked among the faint-hearted, of whom I was one, who went into the Government lobby in support of the Wilson administration. Lyon really did care about racial equality.

However, Lyon's courage, tinged it must be said with a certain self-righteousness, sowed the seeds of discord with Jim Callaghan who had the unenviable task of carrying through these unpopular measures as Home Secretary. When Labour was returned to power in 1974 Lyon became Minister of State at the Home Office and again had difficulty with Jim Callaghan, who was by now Foreign Secretary. When Callaghan became Prime Minister, Lyon was asked to leave the Government and this was the source of burning resentment.

In 1979 Lyon did well to hold the marginal seat of York but he could not do so again in 1983, when his second wife, Clare Short, was successful in Birmingham. I greatly admired the way in which Lyon was prepared for role reversal and was quite content to work for Clare, as Clare had worked for him. It was a remarkable partnership between people who were really conviction politicians.

Lyon came of a Methodist background and reached a senior position in the Methodist conference. He was the epitome of the well-known saying that the Labour movement owed more to Methodism than to Marx.

His contribution to Home Office-type causes cannot be underestimated. His colleagues on the Younger Committee on Privacy thought extremely highly of him with all the experience of being called to the Bar back in 1954. With characteristic courage he bore a long illness with enormous support from Clare Short.

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References

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