Born May 16, 1941;

Died November 14, 2009.

 

John McWilliam, who has died aged 68 from complications following a bout of pneumonia, was a Scots Labour politician who sat for the English constituency of Blaydon from 1979-2005. A telecommunications engineer by background, he was a diligent MP who ended his career as a Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons.

He excelled in the kind of obscure procedures-based positions shunned by more ambitious politicians, aided by his keen mind, prodigious memory and detailed know­ledge of standing orders. Mr McWilliam began as deputy to Michael Silkin as Shadow Leader of the House from 1983-84, and in 1988 he was appointed to the Speaker’s panel of chairmen, becoming a Deputy Speaker (of Westminster Hall) in 2000.

John David McWilliam was the son of Alexander McWilliam, a Post Office engineer, and Josephine Gibson. He was educated at St Margaret’s Episcopal School, Leith Academy, Heriot-Watt College and the Napier College of Science and Technology. In 1957, he joined the Post Office as an engineer.

He joined the Labour Party in the mid-1960s having become interested in politics through an acquaintance with James Hoy, the Labour MP for Leith. Then the Labour old guard on Edinburgh Corporation suffered a heavy defeat in 1968. Two years later, Mr McWilliam was selected as a candidate and elected to the Liberton ward. Colleagues included Robin Cook, George Foulkes and Jim Boyack.

Mr McWilliam was a councillor for five years, standing down when the Corporation was abolished in 1975. Local government reorganisation in 1973-74, under which Edinburgh was to be governed by a two-tier system comprising Lothian Regional Council (LRC) and Edinburgh District Council, had produced tension between those selected for each authority.

Mr McWilliam had become the Corporation’s first, last and only Labour Treasurer in 1974 and was not standing for either the region or the district. Perceived, therefore, as a neutral figure in the power struggle, Mr McWilliam virtually ran Scotland’s capital while Jack Kane, leader of the Labour group, focused on elections to LRC.

Instead, Mr McWilliam’s sights were on the House of Commons, and in the February 1974 General Election he stood for Edinburgh Pentlands, losing out to a young Malcolm Rifkind. He chose not to try again at a second election in October, and was subsequently chosen to succeed the NUM-sponsored Robert Woof in the Tyneside constituency of Blaydon.

He was sponsored by the Post Office Engineers’ Union, and remained an engineer in Edinburgh until the 1979 General Election. Active in the city’s trades council, colleagues remember Mr McWilliam’s ability to bring local union meetings to a halt by quoting standing orders with which no-one else was as familiar.

The north of England, always accepting of Scots-born MPs, warmed to Mr McWilliam. He was active in an array of social clubs and a diligent constituency MP.

Mr McWilliam’s timing in joining the Commons, however, was unfortunate. With 18 years of Conservative rule before him, he became part of the “lost generation” of Labour MPs first elected in 1979 and, therefore, too old to be considered for advancement under Tony Blair.

He still managed to pack a lot into his parliamentary career. After deputising for Mr Silkin, Mr McWilliam was appointed special assistant to the Labour chief whip Michael Cocks in 1984. He rose to become a deputy whip, earning respect through his blunt speaking and sensible judgment.

Having nominated Neil Kinnock for the leadership, and Denzil Davies for the deputy leadership, Mr McWilliam aligned himself with the soft left, Eurosceptic, pro-CND wing of Labour.

Mr McWilliam was convivial, enjoyed big-band jazz and was known for his love of life. He was also one of the most technologically-minded MPs. Mr McWilliam drew on his previous career to introduce successfully an amendment to the British Tele­communications Bill to limit telephone tapping in 1981, and he chaired the computer sub-committee of the Services Committee from 1983-87.

Committee work, in fact, became second nature. Mr McWilliam was a member of the Select Committee on Education, Science and the Arts from 1980-83, the Select Committee on Procedure from 1984-87 and, finally, the Defence Select Committee from 1987-99, on which he emerged as a staunch defender

of the defence industry.

Mr McWilliam was also at home on the Speaker’s panel of chairmen, made up of senior MPs who chaired the committee stages of Bills. He was procedurally knowledgeable and contemptuous of colleagues who, as he put it, indulged in verbal diarrhoea. His attempt to succeed Betty Boothroyd as Speaker, however, failed.

After retiring from the Commons in 2005, Mr McWilliam returned to Scotland, settling with his third wife, Helena, at Comrie, Perthshire, where he could indulge his love of fly-fishing. He had previously been married to Lesley, with whom he had two daughters, and Mary.

David Torrance