In his first speech at Westminster in March 1974, a month after being elected as the MP for the then newly created Midlands seat of West Bromwich East, Peter Snape, who has died aged 84, described his constituents as a “special brand” of people. They were, he said, forthright and honest, with a down-to-earth sense of humour – a portrayal which the ensuing 50 years of active membership of both houses of parliament would also prove to be an unwittingly precise description of Snape himself. Lord Snape, as he became in 2004, having stood down from the Commons at the preceding election in 2001, was someone who enhanced political life because he was clever and funny and sharp as a tack, but, much more importantly, because he spoke with the authentic voice of lived experience.
He had worked on the railways and been a regular soldier in the army. He knew what he was talking about and he instinctively understood what mattered to the men and women on the streets of West Bromwich, or anywhere else in the industrialised landscape of urban Britain. He was sometimes wrongly characterised as being on Labour’s rightwing, because he had no time for what he saw as the self-conscious showmanship and posturing of the party’s left (Tony Benn was a particular bugbear) which, in his view, would do little to improve the lives of working people.
His was a rooted socialism, founded by a fundamental belief in fairness and equality. He was also a skilful political tactician, a natural for the Labour whips’ office, in which he served in the difficult days of the Wilson and Callaghan governments before 1979. On one occasion, he was profoundly shocked, when sitting on the government bench as the “duty whip” during a late-night debate, to be unexpectedly joined by the prime minister, James Callaghan, who asked him conversationally (and sotto voce) if he had ever thought of emigrating because “this country is finished”.
Snape was still a relatively new and young MP and discreetly kept this exchange entirely private. That he failed to become chief whip on the three occasions he stood in 1983, 1985 and 1990 for a post that was at that time elected by Labour MPs, was a personal disappointment and more a reflection on the internal politics of the parliamentary Labour party at the time than on his suitability for the office. He also stood unsuccessfully in 1988 for the role of deputy chief whip.
Snape was 55 by the time Tony Blair took office in 1997 and was then apparently deemed not a good fit for the red-rose “new” Labour government, despite unwavering party loyalty. When he left the Commons – with what proved the correct expectation of a peerage – he was subsequently an exceedingly assiduous participant in Lords’ debates. Snape was “a proud son of Stockport”, in the words of the prime minister, Andy Burnham, who also said: “He was a good friend to me.” He was a lifelong supporter of Stockport County FC, of which he was a board member from 2010 until 2013.
He was born in Stockport, the only child of Kathleen (nee Critchley) and Thomas Snape. His mother was a former laundry worker. His father was a railwayman, a carriage and wagon examiner, but did not meet his son until he returned from second world war service, bringing his boy a train set as a gift.
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