Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove

Neil George Carmichael, politician: born Glasgow 21 October 1921; MP (Labour) for Glasgow Woodside 1962-74, for Glasgow Kelvingrove 1974-83; PPS to Minister of Technology 1966-67; Joint Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Transport 1967-69; Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Technology 1969-70; Parliamentary Under- Secretary of State, Department of the Environment 1974-75, Department of Industry 1975-76; Hon Secretary, Scottish Labour Group of MPs 1979-83; created 1983 Baron Carmichael of Kelvingrove; married 1948 Catherine Rankin (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1987); died Glasgow 19 July 2001.

One of the duties of a by-election winner is to help other by-election candidates. I shall never forget that November campaign in 1962 when Neil Carmichael won from the Conservatives the marginal seat of Glasgow Woodside. All by-elections are said to be crucial, but Woodside really was because it started the demise of the Conservative Party in Scotland.

One reason why Carmichael won by 1,368 votes was that the incumbent Member of Parliament, William Grant, having been Lord Advocate, the senior government law officer in Scotland, appointed himself not only as a judge but as one of the two most senior judges, the Lord Justice Clerk.

In by-elections, death is an excusable cause. Death does not harm a party seeking to replace a former Member. But going off for any reason in the middle of a parliament to what is perceived as a cushy job is punishable by the electorate.

The second reason why Carmichael squeezed home was that he fought a feisty campaign against the Liberal candidate, Jack House, daily columnist of the Glasgow Evening Times and self-styled "Voice of Glasgow". Carmichael was to become a workhorse and thoroughly useful minister in a variety of economic posts, ever constructive, serving the Labour government.

Neil George Carmichael was born into the socialist purple. His father, the Clydesider Jimmy Carmichael, was a prominent member of the Glasgow Town Council from 1929 to 1946, having contested the Cathcart Division of Glasgow in the middle of the Second World War in April 1942 for the Independent Labour Party. Carmichael senior was elected for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow in 1946 as an IOP member, but joined the Labour Party in November 1947 and remained in the House of Commons until he resigned from ill-health in June 1961.

Carmichael junior had a fund of information from his cradle memories of the Clydesiders which were of genuine interest to his parliamentary colleagues. After school at East Bank Academy he went to the Royal College of Science and Technology. He saw war service in technical arms in North Africa and Europe. Completing his degree he entered the Engineers Department of the Gas Board in 1949 as a planner, after having valuable experience working for a number of building contractors. He was promoted to the Organisation and Methods Department of the Gas Board in 1959.

In his maiden speech on 17 December 1962, I heard him say:

I know, in my own area, of one job advertised which received over 100 applicants, and of one firm which advertised a few apprenticeships receiving 270 applications. There are just not enough jobs in the country and far, far too few in my part of the country. The position in Scotland is quite desperate. We have an unemployed figure of 93,000. The social and economic barometer of the health of Scotland is the shipyards, the heavy and medium engineering. In four years those employed in ship building have dropped from 27,500 to 19,500 – there are just not the jobs any more.

Throughout his political life Carmichael was to fight not only for jobs but for engineering and skilled jobs. He passionately believed that whatever the role of the service industries Scotland and Britain should not forget the traditional heavy engineering which was the nucleus of any meaningful export industry. As he put it:

It would be a tragedy to allow these communities to break up even further than they have. No less than 250,000 people had left Scotland in the 1950s because of lack of opportunity.

Carmichael campaigned to increase unemployment benefit, on the grounds that it would help the economy, it would greatly help people in very severe need, and above all it would provide an assurance that Government were really serious in their attempt to deal with the unemployment problem, increasing not merely individual productivity but the national product.

When the Labour government came to power in 1964, Carmichael became PPS to Frank Cousins, a kindred spirit as a left-winger and a trade union leader. Because he could not speak in the House of Commons on matters which impinged on his boss's portfolio he used his time before gaining ministerial office to campaign on the treatment of offenders and how they could be rehabilitated:

It is important to realise that the people who want to adopt new methods of training are not merely do-gooders or amateurs. They are the people who for perhaps 20 years have been in daily contact with prisoners and boys in Borstal. They have seen the brutal type of boy and the brutal methods used in an attempt to cure boys of that type. It is because they realise that these methods are not effective that they are anxious to discover what makes people tick fundamentally and what makes one boy become a criminal while another with a similar background does not.

He campaigned for a professional staff in conjunction with universities to undertake the training of officers in the prison and borstal services.

At this period his wife, Kay, was becoming an ever more authoritative criminologist in her own right. As a couple they were a force for innovation and it was a great sadness when the marriage was dissolved in 1987. Both parties insisted that they remained friends, and I think it was one of few incidences when that claim between two people remained true.

Carmichael's first job in government was as Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Transport, where Barbara Castle, another left-winger was Queen Empress. On 6 November 1967 it was Carmichael who initiated the parliamentary authority for the 70mph speed limit:

It is unfortunate that the 70mph speed limit has been considered so often in isolation. This was, perhaps inevitable from the manner of its introduction. A single, highly controversial measure introduces an experiment and subject to periodic examination must become

something of a target to be shot at, but in our view the 70mph limit should now be seen assomething more than this. It should be seen as part of a comprehensive speed-limit policy designed to strike a fair balance between the convenience of motorists and the need to reduce accidents.

A safe speed for any individual driver at a given time depends on many things, among them the quality of the road, road conditions and the quality of his vehicle. Some people have suggested that because of this each driver should be left to strike a personal balance between these variables and arrive at his own safe speed.

Carmichael was extremely conscientious to my first-hand knowledge in consulting all those who ought to be consulted and it was on that basis that he stuck to the 70mph.

A succession of economic jobs followed until in 1976 he was sacked to his chagrin by Jim Callaghan when he became Prime Minister. Barbara Castle's protégés were very vulnerable.

I believe that one of Carmichael's most lasting achievements was the sustained support for the Royal College of Science and Technology, his Alma Mater, in its transition into the University of Strathclyde. The late Professor Sir Sam Curran, the distinguished physicist Principal of Strathclyde, was eternally grateful for Carmichael's ceaseless lobbying on behalf of what was to become Scotland's fifth university and its first for 400 years.