It is only the passage of time that has revealed the extent of the role played by Tom Sawyer, the former Labour general secretary, who has died aged 82, in the regeneration of his party before its triumphant return to power in the 1997 general election. He used his authority as a distinguished trade union leader and his credibility as a one-time stalwart of the left to show the Labour party membership a way out of the political wilderness.
It was his unseen hand that drew the route map. It was his work on the party’s national executive committee (NEC) that secured a radical review of Labour’s policies, specifically its previous commitments to unilateralism and opposition to Europe, after its humiliating third consecutive general election defeat in 1987. And it was he who recognised the need to modernise the party culture to reflect the politics of the time; he saw that this should address its approach to wealth creation and enterprise, and then effectively erected the scaffolding to remodel Labour’s own constitution.
