Eric Heffer

Eric Samuel Heffer (12 January 1922 – 27 May 1991) was a British socialist politician.

Despite growing up in the 1930s, his family did not experience much of the economic privations common in other parts of the country.

Typically for a working-class boy he attended school at Longmore Senior School, Hertford, only until the age of 14.

On leaving school Heffer ran through a series of skilled apprenticeships, including as an electrician, leatherworker and finally a carpenter.

He learnt the trade of a joiner, and worked on building sites from the age of 16.

This was a skilled trade and when building work was much in demand, he could earn a good wage; but when there were difficulties in the trade, work would dry up.

However, his work allowed him time to study and read in his spare time, and Heffer attended courses run by the Workers' Educational Association and at the National Council of Labour Colleges.

Heffer was active in the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers (ASW).

During World War II, he served in the Royal Air Force in a maintenance unit at Fazakerley near Liverpool.

When the Jarrow March passed through Hertford in 1936 Heffer had gone to see them and the experience had a profound effect upon him.

The family often discussed politics at home and he saw his political convictions, support for trade unionism and his religious convictions as part of the same analysis of the world.

In 1939 Heffer joined the Labour Party.

However, when the Soviet Union was invaded by Nazi forces in 1941, Heffer resigned from Labour and joined the Communist Party of Great Britain; he said that "To me, Stalin was the greatest of men".

In the Liverpool Communist Party, Heffer met his future wife Doris.

While Communism was attractive to Heffer as an expression of working-class consciousness, he was not attracted to the party's intense control over its members, and was not inclined to defer to the party's dictates.

After the war Heffer briefly lived in Hertford again with his parents, and sought election as a Communist candidate for Hertford Urban District Council in 1946, but was defeated.

He then settled in Liverpool, where there was a strong working-class community and within it a large group of left-wing workers waiting to be organised.

He was a shop steward for his union; when in 1948 he led an unofficial carpenters' strike against the party's wishes, the Communist Party expelled him and he rejoined the Labour Party within six months.

The Communist Party tried to persuade Doris Heffer to choose between her husband and the party.

She refused and allowed her membership to expire.

Heffer grew to love his adopted city and supported Everton F.C. He responded to the demand for a left-wing political organisation in 1954 by linking with a group led by Harry McShane (from Glasgow) and the Militant Socialist Group from London to establish the 'Federation of Marxist Groups' (later renamed the 'Socialist Workers Federation') which had a policy of syndicalism.

This group was a compromise: while it insisted that it itself was not a revolutionary political party, it simultaneously said that there was a need for such a party, and actively rejected the Labour Party.

However, Heffer had decided by 1956 to rejoin the Labour Party.

His activities led to Heffer becoming known through Liverpool where he served on the Executive of the Trades Council; he was its Vice President in 1958, President in 1959 and again in 1964.

The Trades Council was a local association of trade unions, and as such Heffer helped mediate and end an unofficial strike of seamen in 1960.

He was also elected as a Liverpool City Councillor for Pirrie ward that year.

Heffer made a contribution to a book, The Agreeable Autocracies, which was published in 1961.

The book was a discussion of United States institutions.

In 1962 he made a run for the job of General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers, but was defeated.

In 1963 Heffer was unexpectedly selected to fight the Liverpool Walton constituency for the Labour Party.

He was Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Walton from 1964 until his death.

Due to his experience as a professional joiner, he made a speciality of the construction industry and its employment practices, but was also concerned with trade union issues in general.

The previously Conservative-held constituency went to Heffer on a large swing in the 1964 general election, as did a number of other Liverpool seats.

There was never any doubt that Heffer would ally with the left in the Parliamentary Labour Party, and he campaigned in 1965 for early moves to nationalise the docks, where he knew from his experience on Liverpool Trades Council that dockers were employed on highly disadvantageous terms that effectively prevented trade unions forming.

He changed his view on the European Common Market from being an outspoken supporter to an outspoken opponent, and served a brief period in government in the mid-1970s.

His later career was dominated by his contribution to debates within the Labour Party and he defended the Liverpool City Council.

Heffer was born in Hertford into a working-class family.

His grandfather was a bricklayer and later a railway signalman, and his father was a boot-maker and repairer, although he owned his own business.

In later life Heffer proudly declared "I am therefore completely proletarian in background".

Heffer's family were members of the high church tendency of the Church of England, and Heffer himself was a choirboy in the local church: it was there that Heffer led his first strike at the age of eight, and, he said, first experienced victimisation by his employer.