Bob Mellish, Baron Mellish

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Robert Joseph Mellish, Baron Mellish, PC (March 3, 1913 – May 9, 1998) was a British politician. He was a long-serving Labour Party MP (from 1946 to 1982) and served as the Labour Chief Whip from 1969 until 1976 but in his later years he fell out with his local Constituency Labour Party which had become dominated by left-wingers, and eventually left the party.

Mellish was born in Bermondsey to a docker father, the thirteenth of fourteen children. His father had taken part in the dockers' strikes of 1899 and 1912. After he left school he worked for the Transport and General Workers' Union and when the Second World War started in 1939 he was called up and ended the war as a Major in the Royal Engineers fighting the Japanese in South-East Asia.

When Sir Ben Smith resigned from Parliament, the Rotherhithe constituency was vacated. Most local opinion favoured Dr John Gillison who represented the area on the London County Council but Mellish was selected after the TGWU dockers' delegates voted for him en block. He easily won the constituency in a by-election in 1946. This constituency was expanded in 1950 and named Bermondsey.

In 1950 he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Supply, George Strauss and then in 1951 to the Minister for Pensions, George Isaacs. He was also Chairman of the London Regional Labour Party from 1956 to 1977.

Mellish was appointed by Harold Wilson as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Chief Whip) which he held during Labour Governments from 1969 to 1970 and again from 1974 to 1976. He was renowned as a tough Chief Whip. He was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Housing and Local Government when Labour won in 1964 until 1967 and also Minister of Public Building and Works from 1967 until 1969. He became Minister for Housing and Local Government in 1970.

Mellish was in favour of Britain's entry into the Common Market but voted to oppose Edward Heath's policy of entry in 1971, in accordance with Labour Party policy. He was loyal to the Labour Party leader Harold Wilson and apparently wept when he heard the news that he had resigned as Prime Minister in 1976. He supported Michael Foot to replace Wilson but Jim Callaghan won instead. Mellish did not get on well with Callaghan and so left the Government a few months later.

Mellish once opened a speech by saying "As I come to this platform, many of you will know that I have never been an anti-racialist".Mark Steel, Reasons to Be Cheerful (Scribner, 2002), pp. 129-130. In 1974 Mellish complained about the influx of Malawi Asian immigrants into Britain: "[they] cannot come here just because they have a British passport--full stop." [link] In May 1976 Mellish spoke in Parliament on the same subject:

This nation has done all it should have done. Its record is one of great honour and integrity, but I say, "Enough is enough". This burden cannot go on being taken by our people alone. Let us start talking about whether we cannot pay their fares and their rehabilitation back to India...Problems at local level will become worse and worse for our own people unless something is done. [link], [link], [link]

The government of Margaret Thatcher was keen to get a Labour figure to sit on the London Docklands Development Corporation as Vice Chairman in 1980 but the Labour Party was entirely opposed to the creation of the LDDC and refused to nominate. Mellish offered a way through as he was willing to take the post; as a sitting MP he would lose his seat if the post was paid, so a special provision was made that it would be unpaid until the Vice Chairman elected to take payment. Mellish's acceptance of a post with the LDDC exacerbated the split with the Bermondsey CLP which had elected a slate of left-wing officers at its annual meeting that same year.

Mellish was against the shift to the Left in the Labour Party and decided not to stand for election again. He wanted his ally John O'Grady, Leader of Southwark Borough Council, to be selected in his stead but the constituency party selected Peter Tatchell, its Secretary. Mellish made his discontent public and threatened to resign immediately and force a by-election if Tatchell was endorsed by the Labour Party nationally. Unexpectedly Labour leader Michael Foot announced that Tatchell would never be endorsed "so far as I am concerned".

However, when in August 1982 it became clear that Tatchell would be permitted to stand if the Constituency Labour Party selected him again, Mellish announced his resignation from the Labour Party to sit as an Independent MP. In November that year he resigned his seat in Parliament and forced a 1983 by-election in which Mellish campaigned for O'Grady who stood as a 'Real Bermondsey Labour' candidate. O'Grady performed badly at the byelection although Mellish did take some satisfaction from the heavy defeat of Tatchell by the Liberal candidate, Simon Hughes.

Mellish later joined the Social Democratic Party. In 1985 he stood down from the LDDC and accepted a life peerage. Mellish was a supporter of Millwall Football Club and was President of the Millwall Supporters Club. [link] Peter Tatchell claimed in 2003 (see external link) that Mellish was secretly bisexual and was 'persistent' in propositioning Tatchell but warned him when he was rebuffed not to publicise it as no one would believe him.

The tallest building in Milton Keynes, Mellish Court, is named after him.

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