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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Kinnock explained his change of attitude, despite the continuing presence of 90 hereditary peers and appointment by patronage, by asserting that the Lords was a good base for campaigning.

Kinnock also blamed his defeat on the other newspapers who had backed the Tories in the run-up to the election.

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

( She had sent a letter to Kinnock claiming to fully support his leadership bid and lobbying for the role, yet also sent an identical letter to Kinnock's opponent in the Labour leadership election, Roy Hattersley.

She was also promoted to the front bench by Neil Kinnock in 1991 as a spokeswoman for health and women.

The song also got help with funding and donations from celebrities such as HRH Prince Charles, ( he also requested a copy to be sent to Buckingham Palace ), The then Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher, The Labour Party Leadrer Niel Kinnock M. P, and Sir Paul McCartney, and the single was mixed at Abbey Road Recording Studios.

Kinnock supported a far more positive approach to European cooperation, and also extending the case for planning agreements with leading firms not only as an ‘ alternative economic strategy ’ to monetarism, but also for Europe, which also was supported also by Delors.

Her agency also represented many of the biggest names in the fashion industry including Katharine Hamnett, Jasper Conran, and Jean-Paul Gaultier ; figures from the world of entertainment such as Annie Lennox, Lenny Henry and Ruby Wax, and even worked briefly with the Labour Party in 1986, helping to promote Neil Kinnock ahead of the 1987 general election.

It was also the birthplace of former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock who attended Georgetown Infants and Juniors.

He also served as a press officer to Labour leader Neil Kinnock during the 1987 general election.

( he also requested a copy to be sent to Buckingham Palace ), The then Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher, The Labour Party Leadrer Niel Kinnock M. P, and Sir Paul McCartney, and the single was mixed at Abbey Road Recording Studios.

Burtonwood village also has two doctors ' surgeries, known as Burtonwood Surgery on Clay Lane, and Kinnock Park Surgery.

This action was capable of misinterpretation: Heffer was fully supportive of the council's actions, but not a Militant member, and felt that Kinnock was insulting the whole City, and also that he as the senior Liverpool MP ought to have been told in advance.

In the end, though, Kinnock won a decisive victory over Benn and would soon enjoy a substantial rise in support.

The next two editors, Phil Kelly ( editor 1987-91 ), and Paul Anderson ( editor 1991-93 ), took much the same line though both clashed with Kinnock, particularly over his decision to abandon Labour's non-nuclear defence policy.

He once branded Neil Kinnock a " traitor " over the latter's denunciation of the Militant Tendency activists who dominated local government on Merseyside.

Since then it has been endowed with papers from other political figures including former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, as well as former Leader of the Opposition Neil Kinnock, alongside those of eminent scientists and engineers, including Reginald Victor Jones, Rosalind Franklin and Sir Frank Whittle.

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.

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.

This changed during the Premiership of Margaret Thatcher, when the prime minister chose not to transfer any questions to other members of her Cabinet, and Labour leader Neil Kinnock would always take his full allocation of questions.

Returning to the House of Commons, Margaret Beckett gradually moved away from the hard left, supporting incumbent leader Neil Kinnock against Benn in 1988.

Other non-fiction works followed: Gotcha, the Media, the Government and the Falklands Crisis ( 1983 ), The Making of Neil Kinnock ( 1984 ), Selling Hitler ( 1986 ), an investigation of the Hitler Diaries scandal, and Good and Faithful Servant ( 1990 ), a study of Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher's press secretary.

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.

This tactic of picketing was outlawed in the United Kingdom by the Conservative Party government of Margaret Thatcher in the mid 1980s, but the Labour opposition led by Neil Kinnock was pushing for it to be legalised in the run-up to the 1987 general election.