Member of Parliament ( MP )
What position did Giles Radice take in early 1980s?
Giles Radice Giles Heneage Radice , Baron Radice , PC ( born 4 October 1936 ) is a Labour member of the House of Lords . He was previously a Member of Parliament ( MP ) from 1973 to 2001 . Early life . Radice was educated at Winchester College and Magdalen College , Oxford . He worked as a research officer for the General and Municipal Workers Union and was chair of the Young Fabians from 1967 to 1968 . Parliamentary career . Radice first stood for Parliament at Chippenham in 1964 and 1966 , but came third each time . He was elected Labour Member of Parliament for Chester-le-Street from a 1973 by-election to 1983 and then North Durham until his retirement in 2001 . Radice served as Education spokesman in the Labour Shadow Cabinet under Neil Kinnock in the 1980s . As chairman of the Treasury Select Committee , Radice helped make the monetary policy committee of the Bank of England accountable to both Parliament and the people for its decisions over interest rates . He was a member of the House of Lords European Union Sub-Committee on external affairs until March 2015 . A europhile , Radice was one of only five Labour MPs to vote for the Third Reading of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 , defying his party Whip , which was to abstain . He was made a life peer as Baron Radice , of Chester-le-Street in the County of Durham , on 16 July 2001 . Writing and political ideas . As an advocate of the need for Labour to ditch traditional dogmas , Radice was something of a precursor to Tony Blair . In his 1989 book Labours Path to Power : The New Revisionism , Radice set out his vision for a modernised Labour Party , which included abandoning Clause IV of the party constitution . His highly influential and widely quoted Southern Discomfort pamphlet in 1992 also argued the case for reform . Using focus group evidence , Radice found that voters in the south believed that Labour was out of touch , extremist and against aspiration . Philip Stephens later wrote in the Financial Times , At that time , Giles Radice , then an MP , wrote a brilliant essay on what he called Labours southern discomfort . The party would not win , he argued , unless and until it managed to connect its ambitions for social justice with the individualistic aspirations of the voters in southern England . Here was the template for Mr Blair . Radice returned to this theme following Labours 2010 defeat : his Southern Discomfort Again pamphlet ( with Patrick Diamond ) found that voters perceived that Labour had run out of steam , were out of touch ( particularly on immigration ) , unfair and poorly led . In this pamphlet and in Southern Discomfort : One Year On ( 2011 ) , Radice warned that the southern problem is more than geographical : social change means that Labour support collapsed in other areas , including the Midlands . A committed pro-European , Radice has for many years been a leading member both of the European Movement and Britain in Europe , and wrote a polemic called Offshore in 1992 , in which he put the case for Britain in Europe . After his retirement as an MP in 2001 Radice , wrote Friends and Rivals , an acclaimed triple biography of three modernisers from an earlier generation—Roy Jenkins , Denis Healey , and Anthony Crosland—arguing that their failure to work more closely together had harmed the modernising cause . This was followed by The Tortoise and the Hares , a comparative biography of Clement Attlee , Ernest Bevin , Stafford Cripps , Hugh Dalton and Herbert Morrison . Trio : Inside the Blair , Brown , Mandelson Project was published in 2010 . In a review of Trio , Andrew Blick wrote that , With his previous work Friends and Rivals ( 2002 ) and The Tortoise and the Hares ( 2008 ) , Radice developed a distinctive approach to contemporary history , using group biography ...Radice adds to his historical approach not only a readable writing style , but the judgements of an experienced Labour politician . Other positions . Lord Radice has been a member of the advisory board of the Centre for British Studies of Berlins Humboldt University since 1998 . He is a member of the Fabian Society . He is a former Chair of the British Association for Central and Eastern Europe ( BACEE ) , and was Chair of the European Movement , 1995–2001 . He is also a former Chairman of Policy Network , the international progressive thinktank based in London . Bibliography . - Divide and rule : the Industrial Relations Bill . ( with J.O.N . Vickers ) Fabian Society , London . 1971 - Community socialism . Fabian Society , London . 1979 - Equality and quality : a socialist plan for education . Fabian Society , London . 1986 - Labours Path to Power : The New Revisionism Palgrave Macmilan , 1989 , - Offshore : Britain and the European Idea I.B.Tauris , 1992 , - The New Germans Michael Joseph , 1995 , - Friends and Rivals Octagon Press , 2003 , - Diaries 1980-2001 : The Political Diaries of Giles Radice Orion , 2004 , - The Tortoise and the Hares : Attlee , Bevin , Cripps , Dalton , Morrison Politicos Publishing , 2008 , - Trio : Inside the Blair , Brown , Mandelson Project I.B.Tauris , 2010 , - Southern Discomfort Fabian Society , 1992 , 978-0716305552 - More Southern Discomfort : a year on - taxing and spending Fabian Society , 1993 - Southern Discomfort Again ( with Patrick Diamond ) Policy Network , 2010 - Southern Discomfort Again : One Year On ( with Patrick Diamond ) , Policy Network , 2011