John Smith
| John Smith link Companies House Sourcewatch Wikiquote (Politician) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1938-09-13 Dalmally, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, UK |
| Died | 12 May 1994 London, England, UK |
Cause of death | "Heart attack" |
| Victim of | premature death |
| Nationality | UK |
| Alma mater | University of Glasgow |
| Religion | Church of Scotland |
| Children | 3, including, Sarah Smith |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Bennett |
| Party | Labour |
UK labour leader who suffered a fatal heart attack | |
John Smith QC was a UK politician and former Leader of the Labour Party. After Labour leader Neil Kinnock resigned following the Party's surprise loss in the 1992 general election to new Conservative leader John Major, Smith was elected his successor in July 1992. He continued Kinnock's moves to reform Labour, abolishing the trade union block vote at Labour party conferences and replacing it with "one member, one vote" at the 1993 party conference. However, his overall cautious approach to reform, which was dubbed "one more heave", sought to avoid controversy and win the next election by capitalising on the unpopularity of the Conservative government. This frustrated many "modernisers" like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, for whom his sudden death in May 1994 came at a very convenient time.
He was succeeded as Leader by Tony Blair, who undertook the subsequent re-branding of Labour as New Labour, then winning the 1997 general election.
Death
Smith died on 12 May 1994, the day after attending a gala dinner organised by Julia Hobsbawm and Sarah Brown of Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications.[1] At the time he was a director of the Britain-Russia Centre and the British East-West Centre.[2]
Blair's premonition
In Tony Blair’s memoirs, A Journey (2010), he writes of a premonition of John Smith's death. At the beginning of April 1994, when John Smith was leader of the Labour Party, Blair was staying in a hotel in Paris with his wife Cherie. Blair writes:
I remember waking up the first morning and then waking Cherie. I said to her “If John dies, I will be leader, not Gordon (Brown). And somehow I think this will happen. I just think it will.[3]