* Labour MP John Stonehouse's faked suicide ( 1974 )

Henry McLeish, Labour First Minister of Scotland, failed to refund the House of Commons for income he had received from the sub-let of his constituency office in Glenrothes while still a Westminster MP.

In 1930, Labour MP Oswald Mosley left the party after its rejection of his proposals for solving the unemployment problem.

Donald Campbell Dewar ( 21 August 1937 – 11 October 2000 ) was a Scottish politician who served as a Labour Party Member of Parliament ( MP ) in Scotland from 1966-1970, and then again from 1978 until his death in 2000.

He first entered the House of Commons in the general election of 1966, as the Labour MP for Aberdeen South, at the age of 28.

" The biography of Labour MP Tom Driberg, written by Francis Wheen, claims that — like Driberg — Mountbatten had " a sexual preference for men ".

The former Labour MP Tony Banks said of Major in 1994 that " He was a fairly competent chairman of Housing on Lambeth Council.

This was in response to a question from the MP David Clelland, asking " What has the Labour government ever done for us?

Michael Foot's elder brothers were Sir Dingle Foot MP ( 1905 – 1978 ), a Liberal and subsequently Labour MP ; Hugh Foot, Baron Caradon ( 1907 – 1990 ), a Governor of Cyprus, a representative of the United Kingdom at the United Nations from 1964 to 1970, and father to campaigning journalist Paul Foot ( 1937 – 2004 ) and charity worker Oliver Foot ( 1946 – 2008 ); and Liberal politician John Foot, Baron Foot ( 1909 – 1999 ).

A Labour MP, Terry Fields, was jailed for 60 days for refusing to pay his poll tax.

The son of a Welsh coal miner who later became a union official and Labour MP, Roy Jenkins served with distinction in World War II.

This grouping of " neo-fundamentalists " have their roots within the camp of the former high-profile Labour Party MP Jim Sillars who left Labour to form the short-lived Scottish Labour Party in 1976 ( the party had no connection with the UK Labour Party or the current Scottish Labour group in the Scottish Parliament ).

* September 20 – Caroline Flint, British Politician and Labour MP for Don Valley

After unsuccessfully contesting the Labour Party's ultra-safe seat of Normanton at a by-election in 1947 ( when the Labour majority was 62 %), he was elected as Member of Parliament ( MP ) for Wolverhampton South West in the 1950 general election.

The Shadow Home Secretary, Labour MP Roy Hattersley, criticised Powell for using " Munich beer-hall language ".

A Labour MP Martin Flannery intervened, saying Powell was making " a National Front speech ".

The area ( initially as Kidderminster, then after 1983 as the Wyre Forest constituency ) has been represented by Conservative MPs Gerald Nabarro 1950 – 63, Sir Tatton Brinton 1964 – 74, Esmond Bulmer 1974 – 87, Anthony Coombs 1987 – 97, and Labour MP David Lock 1997 – 2001.

* Tom Watson ( born 8 January 1967 ), is the Labour Party Member of Parliament ( MP ) for West Bromwich East.

( Several Labour ministers of later generations, such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn, were the sons of Liberal MPs.

This group opposed what they saw as a leftward shift in Labour policy, the increasing prominence within the party of Tony Benn, and the involvement of trade unions in choosing the leader of the Labour Party.

Democratic, Democratic Labour, and Radical were all mentioned as possible names for the new party, as well as New Labour ( which future Labour leader Tony Blair would use to promote the Labour Party more than a decade later ) but eventually Social Democratic was settled on because the ' Gang of Four ' consciously wanted to mould the philosophy and ideology of the new party on the Social Democracy practised on mainland Europe.

On 17 July 2003, Kelly, an employee of the Ministry of Defence, apparently committed suicide after being misquoted by BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan as saying that Tony Blair's Labour government had knowingly " sexed up " the " September Dossier ", a report into Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.

Having served as prime minister for six years and 92 days, his reign as prime minister was the longest unbroken reign of any Labour leader until Tony Blair more than 50 years later.

However, in the run-up to the 1997 general election, Labour opposition Tony Blair was in talks with Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown about forming a coalition government if Labour failed to win a majority at the election ; however there was never any need for a coalition to be formed as Labour won the election by a landslide.

In 1992 John Smith made him Shadow Social Security Secretary and three years later Dewar was made a Chief Whip for the Labour Party by Tony Blair,

The Electoral success of New Labour in 1997, which would be led by two Prime Ministers with Scottish connections, Tony Blair ( who was brought up in Scotland ) from 1997 to 2007 and Gordon Brown from 2007 – 10, opened the way for constitutional change.

By this time the " New " Labour Party was seen as a reformed and fresh alternative under the leadership of Tony Blair, and after eighteen years in office the Conservatives lost the 1997 general election in one of the worst electoral defeats since the Great Reform Act of 1832.

Few then were surprised when Major's Conservatives lost the 1 May 1997 general election to Tony Blair's " New Labour ", although the immense scale of the defeat was not as widely predicted: in 1987 and 1992 the Conservatives had polled better than had been suggested by the opinion polls, but in 1997 this was no longer the case.

His task became even more difficult after the well-received election of Tony Blair as Labour leader in July 1994.

By the time Labour returned to government in 1997 after 18 years in opposition, Tony Blair ( leader since 1994 ) had abandoned the Labour policy of going back on Tory-led union reforms, as well as ending the commitment of nationalisation of industries and utilities.

In the United Kingdom in the 1980s, the term hard left was applied to supporters of Tony Benn, such as the Campaign Group and Labour Briefing, as well as Trotskyist groups such as the Militant Tendency and Socialist Organiser.

Under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the British Labour Party re-branded itself as New Labour in order to promote the notion that it was less left-wing than it had been in the past.

After Labour Listens, the party went on, in 1988, to produce a new statement of aims and values — meant to supplement and supplant the formulation of Clause IV of the party's constitution ( though, crucially, this was not actually replaced until 1995 under the leadership of Tony Blair ) and was closely modelled on Anthony Crosland's social-democratic thinking — emphasising equality rather than public ownership.

With the Labour left still strong – in 1981 Benn decided to challenge Healey for the deputy leadership of the party, a contest Healey won narrowly – Foot struggled to make an impact and was widely criticised for it, though his performances in the Commons, most notably on the Falklands war of 1982, won him widespread respect from other parliamentarians, though he was criticised by some on the left who felt that he should not have supported the Thatcher government's immediate resort to military action.

He was well regarded by other Labour statesmen including Tony Benn, but came under heavy criticism from others including Denis Healey, who condemned the SDP split as a " disaster " for the Labour Party which prolonged their time in opposition and allowed the Tories to have an unbroken run of nearly 20 years in government.

* Tony Benn, former British Labour MP, chairman and cabinet minister

Politician Tony Benn records in his diary ( 17 February 1981 ) that a journalist from the New Statesman, Duncan Campbell, told him that he had received information from an intelligence agent two years previously that Neave had planned to have Benn assassinated if a Labour Government was elected, James Callaghan resigned and there was a possibility that Benn might be elected Party Leader in his place.

Anthony Neil Wedgwood " Tony " Benn PC ( born 3 April 1925 ), formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, is a retired British Labour Party politician who was a Member of Parliament ( MP ) for 50 years and a Cabinet Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.

Benn's paternal grandfather was John Benn, a successful politician who was created a baronet in 1914, and his father William Wedgwood Benn was a Liberal Member of Parliament who later crossed the floor to the Labour Party.

Benn's granddaughter Emily Benn failed to win East Worthing and Shoreham in 2010, becoming the Labour Party's youngest-ever candidate in the process.

Labour lost the 1970 election to Edward Heath's Conservatives, and upon Heath's application to join the European Economic Community, Benn campaigned in favour of a referendum on the UK's membership.

In the Labour Government of 1974 Benn was Secretary of State for Industry, where he set up worker cooperatives in struggling industries, the best known being at Meriden, which kept Triumph Motorcycles in production until 1983.

Benn publicly circulated the Cabinet minutes from the 1931 National Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald, which cut unemployment benefits in order to secure a loan from American bankers and resulted in the splitting of the Labour Party.

By the end of the 1970s, Benn had migrated to the left wing of the Labour Party.

Benn was overwhelmingly popular with Labour activists: a survey of delegates at the Labour Party Conference in 1978 found that by large margins they supported Benn for the leadership and many Bennite policies.