After the resulting uproar, Sir Greville arrives at Alan and Crosby's office and reveals that he has come into the possession of the note sent to Kinnock ( signed " From Your Newest Recruit "), and that an expert has identified it as Crosby's handwriting, despite his attempt to disguise it.

Although Kinnock had come from the Tribune left of the party, he parted company with many of his former allies after his appointment to the shadow cabinet.

Following the appointment of Neil Kinnock as the Labour leader in 1983, Field was appointed as a spokesman on health and social security for a year.

He served as a frontbench spokesman for the Labour Party, including Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland under Neil Kinnock, 1987 – 94, an appointment that was widely criticised by Unionists.

Foot resigned days after the election and was succeeded as leader on 2 October by Neil Kinnock, who had been tipped from the outset to be Labour's choice of new leader.

In 1981, when still Labour's Education spokesman, Kinnock was alleged to have effectively scuppered Tony Benn's attempt to replace Denis Healey as Labour's deputy leader by first supporting the candidacy of the more traditionalist Tribunite John Silkin and then urging Silkin supporters to abstain on the second, run-off, ballot.

All this meant that Kinnock had made plenty of enemies on the left by the time he was elected as leader, though a substantial number of former Bennites gave him strong backing.

Mandelson and his team had revolutionised Labour's communications – a transformation symbolised by a party election broadcast popularly known as " Kinnock: The Movie ".

This was directed by Hugh Hudson and featured Kinnock's 1985 conference speech, and shots of him and Glenys walking on the Great Orme in Llandudno ( so emphasising his appeal as a family man and associating him with images of Wales away from the coalmining communities where he grew up ), and a speech to that year's Welsh Labour Party conference asking why he was the " first Kinnock in a thousand generations " to go to university.

In 1988, Kinnock was challenged by Tony Benn for the party leadership.

Kinnock was also perceived as scoring in debates over Margaret Thatcher in the Commons — previously an area in which he was seen as weak — and finally Conservative MPs challenged Thatcher's leadership and she resigned on 22 November 1990 to be succeeded by John Major.

Kinnock greeted Thatcher's resignation by describing it as " very good news " and demanded an immediate general election.

Kinnock was a long-time critic of the House of Lords, and his acceptance of a peerage led him to be accused of hypocrisy, by Will Self, among others.

In Episode 4 (" Animals ") of the British sitcom Men Behaving Badly, Series 1, Dermot ( played by Harry Enfield ) says to Gary ( played by Martin Clunes ), " There she was, just standing there, making Michelle Pfeiffer look like Neil Kinnock.

According to Tom Utley, writing in the Daily Telegraph, the site is connected to One World Action, a charity founded by Glenys Kinnock, and to Kinnock herself.

In the period since Benn's defeat in Bristol, Michael Foot had stepped down after the general election in June 1983 ( which saw Labour return a mere 209 MPs ) and was succeeded in October of that year by Neil Kinnock.

Benn stood for election as Party Leader in 1988, against Neil Kinnock, following Labour's third successive defeat in the 1987 general election, and lost by a substantial margin.

The group also published an election pamphlet, Move On Up, with a foreword by Labour leader Neil Kinnock.

Smith was appointed Shadow Chancellor by Neil Kinnock in July 1987 after Party's general election defeat.

He was retained in the shadow cabinet by Neil Kinnock, who succeeded Foot after the disastrous 1983 general election, when the Tories bolstered their majority and Labour suffered their worst general election result in decades.

He was promoted to the Shadow Frontbench in 1984 by Neil Kinnock as a Spokesman for Northern Ireland.

Following the leadership of Neil Kinnock and John Smith, the party under the New Labour brand attempted to widen its electoral appeal and, by the 1997 general election, had made significant gains in the upper and middle classes.

The 1983 general election had given the Conservatives a triple-digit commons majority, but within months a strong challenge to their power-and to the challenge posed by the Alliance-was showing as Labour leader Michael Foot stepped down and was succeeded by Neil Kinnock, whose modernisation of the party saw a dramatic rise in Labour fortunes in the opinion polls-some of which showed them ahead of the Conservatives and the Alliance by March 1984.

He was introduced to the House of Lords on 31 January 2005, after being created Baron Kinnock, of Bedwellty in the County of Gwent.

He was chief economic adviser to Neil Kinnock, the then-Leader of the Labour Party, from 1985 to 1992 and is a Labour member of the House of Lords as Baron Eatwell, of Stratton St Margaret in the County of Wiltshire.

After the Winter of Discontent and the subsequent fall of the Labour government, many corners of the public and media believed that the trade unions were running the Labour Party-an image which Neil Kinnock was keen to shake off after becoming party leader in 1983.

Kinnock, an only child, was born in Tredegar, Wales.

His father Gordon Herbert Kinnock was a coal miner who suffered from dermatitis and had to find work as a labourer ; and his mother Mary Kinnock was a district nurse.

Calling himself a ' unionist ', Kinnock was one of six south Wales Labour MPs to campaign against devolution on centralist, essentially British-nationalist grounds.

Shortly after Labour's hefty election defeat in June 1983, the almost 70-year-old Michael Foot resigned as leader and from the outset it was expected that Kinnock would succeed him.

Kinnock was determined to move the party's political standing to a centre-left position.

Kinnock supported the aim of the strike – which he famously dubbed the " case for coal " – but, as an MP from a mining area, was bitterly critical of the tactics employed.

A new Prime Minister and the fact that Kinnock was now current leader of a major party reduced the impact of calls for " Time for a Change ".

Kinnock gained attention in the United States in 1987 when it was discovered that then-Senator Joe Biden of Delaware plagiarized one of Kinnock's speeches during his 1988 presidential campaign in a speech at a Democratic debate in Iowa in August 1987.

Biden was elected Vice President of the United States in 2008 ; on 18 January 2009 Glenys Kinnock revealed on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that she and Neil Kinnock had received a personal invitation from Biden to attend the inauguration of Barack Obama and Biden on 20 January 2009 at the United States Capitol in Washington.

Kinnock was appointed one of Britain's two members of the European Commission, which he served first as Transport Commissioner under President Jacques Santer, in early 1995 ; marking the end of his 25 years in UK parliament.

In February 2004 it was announced that with effect from 1 November 2004 Kinnock would become head of the British Council.

Labour Party and opposition leader Neil Kinnock made endless calls for a general election throughout 1991, but Major held out and decided not to call the election until he finally set an election date of 9 April 1992.

In 1953, 11-year-old Kinnock began his secondary education at Lewis School, Pengam, which he later criticised for its record on caning in schools.

On the day of the general election, The Sun ran an " infamous " front page featuring Kinnock ( headline: ' If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights ') that he blamed in his resignation speech for losing Labour the election.

He is married to Glenys Kinnock, Britain's Minister for Africa and the United Nations from 2009 to 2010, and a Labour Member of the European Parliament ( MEP ) from 1994 to 2009.

In 1984, Kinnock appeared in the video for the Tracey Ullman song " My Guy " ( his daughter was a fan ) as a someone with a clipboard canvassing on a council estate.

Labour politician Neil Kinnock in the 1980s jokingly called for The Archers to be retitled " The Grundys and their Oppressors ".

It showed support with the Labour Party in the UK, starting with the 1992 general election, when Neil Kinnock was attempting for the second time to return Labour to government for the first time since they had been ousted from power in 1979.

He first entered parliament in 1970 and was the Secretary of State for Trade from 1978 – 1979 and then the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer under Neil Kinnock from 1987-1992.

Under the influence of Eric Hobsbawm on the opposing wing of the party Martin Jacques became the editor of the party's theoretical journal Marxism Today and rapidly made it a significant publication for Eurocommunist opinions in the party, and eventually for revisionist tendencies in the wider liberal-left, in particular for the soft left around Neil Kinnock in the Labour Party.

She supported John Prescott in the Labour deputy-leadership election in 1988 ( against Eric Heffer and the incumbent Roy Hattersley ), leaving the Socialist Campaign Group, along with Margaret Beckett, as a result of Tony Benn's decision to challenge Neil Kinnock for the leadership.

The previous two party leaders, Neil Kinnock and John Smith, had begun efforts to modernise the party as a strategy for electoral success, before Smith died in 1994.

Alastair Campbell was the Labour Party's Press Secretary and led a strategy to neutralise the influence of the press ( which had weakened former Labour leader Neil Kinnock ) and create allies for the party.

He worked as a television producer at London Weekend Television on Weekend World before Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock appointed him as Director of Communications in 1985, with a view to his overseeing Labour's campaign for the next general election, which was ultimately held in June 1987 and ended in a third successive win for Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, although the Conservative majority was slightly reduced as Labour gained 20 seats.