Lord Bilston, Dennis Turner: From choirboy to man of steel
From an 11-year-old choirboy going out on strike in a row over fair pay to the former steel worker who took on the Iron Lady, Dennis Turner was what his Black Country constituents would affectionately term a 'real Labour mon'.
Now a book about the life of the former MP, who went on to be known as Lord Bilston as a peer of the realm, is raising money for the hospice that cared for him in his final months as cancer took him at the age of 71.
The title Real Labour is a reference to his 'old fashioned socialism' and the privilege he felt at representing the place where he lived, work and would eventually die.
Dennis Turner was no Oxbridge educated 'special adviser'. This was a Parliamentarian who had worked his way through life as a Betterware salesman, market trader, steel worker, trades unionist, councillor and then an MP.
The biography by friends and husband and wife team Frank Reeves and Mel Chevannes was compiled from interviews with Lord Bilston himself in his final months at the end of 2013 and early 2014 as well as his colleagues, friends and family.
It reveals details of Dennis's early life in a back to back two-up one-down house. His father, Bert, had served in the Second World War. One day Dennis and his friend Len Bradbury sold Bert's war-time greatcoat to a rag and bone man for a pittance and used the money to buy 22 day-old chicks.
Dennis's mother Molly ended up chasing after the rag and bone man to recover the coat because it served as a blanket on one of the family beds during winter.
The book tells how one of the chicks went home with Len while the others lived with Dennis, keeping warm under the hob. Len's chick had its head bitten off by the family dog and Dennis regretted 'until his last, his childhood selfishness in never thinking to offer Len a replacement bird'.
Dennis always came across as the most polite and kindly politician, able to call anyone he met 'my friend' and mean it. Yet from an early age he displayed the ability to fight hard for what he believed in.
The book tells how Dennis had become a member of St Martin's Church choir, which was particularly busy during the peak wedding season with a wedding every hour on a Saturday.
"Led by Dennis, whose idea it was, the choirboys approached the vicar, organist and choir master, with the demand that the stipend that each was paid for singing at a wedding be doubled from one to two shillings. Their request was refused outright.
"In response, early on a Saturday morning, the choir boys staged a 'sit out' on the church steps, refusing to enter the church until their demand was met in full."
After working as a salesman and market trader Dennis went on to Bilston's steelworks where he was a stock taker and later transport controller.
Then in 1966 at the age of 23 he became, at the time, the youngest ever councillor elected in Wolverhampton.
On the same day the book's author Mel Chevannes became the first ever black Caribbean to be elected.
Dennis told her: "You'll always be Wolverhampton's first black councillor, but I'm only the youngest till they go and elect a 22-year-old."
Dennis would have to argue vigorously with his fellow steel workers who had been swayed by the 'Rivers of Blood' speech on immigration made by the then Wolverhampton MP Enoch Powell. "Dennis's logic was simple," the book says. "The Asians and West Indians were fellow workers, selling their labour and being exploited along with the rest."
Dennis himself said: "I kept telling them that Enoch Powell didn't speak for us all and that union solidarity was the best way of fighting racialism.
"I got them to sign up en masse for the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation."
The steelworks was under threat through most of the 1970s and Dennis was at the forefront of the campaign to keep it open. It eventually closed in 1979.
He even marched with 500 workers to re-brick a furnace under threat of closure and get it back into service for another 18 months. Faced with the prospect of being stopped on health and safety grounds, he took out an insurance policy for 50 workers, much to the annoyance of managers.
All this comes long before his election as an MP and the time he took a 22-month-old child in need of a heart operation to Downing Street and roared: "A little girl's come over 100 miles to see you Mrs Thatcher." And it is long before his elevation to the House of Lords, with the name Baron Bilston.
And it is perhaps this early detail that made Dennis Turner, Lord Bilston, such an interesting politician.
His life as an MP and a peer was shaped entirely by his life before as a worker in the Black Country.
Parliament had in Mrs Thatcher its Iron Lady. In Dennis Turner it had its own political Man of Steel.
Real Labour: The Biography of Dennis Turner is available to buy priced £11.99, with proceeds going to Compton Hospice.
A book launch is taking place at St Martin's Church, Slater Street, Bradley, tomorrow from 11am to 2pm. Another will be on December 2 in the Mayor's Parlour, Wolverhampton Civic Centre. See www.facebook.com/DennisRealLabour
