JOHN Smith is the prime minister that Britain was denied. He paved the way for other Labour PMs of Scottish provenance: Tony Blair (sort of Scottish); Gordon Brown (actual Scottish, embarrassingly enough).

But he died just when he was looking a shoo-in after 18 years of Tory rule. You picture him perhaps as another of these grey men in shapeless suits, typical of Scottish Labour Westminster types at the end of last century.

That was a time when Labour, at least in Reddish – Ginger? – Scotland, felt entitled, which can make representatives slack. The cure for that is duty, which Smith felt in his soul.

With owlish glasses on a baldy heid, he’d a bank manager’s mien, which sounds like an insult, but you’d trust him with your money. He was not, on the face of it, a radical, which often means daft or irresponsible. He was politically moderate, unostentatious. Even the aforementioned Broon is said to have thought him over-cautious.

But, in its other definition of ethically seeking considerable change, “radical” is a term that some say might justly apply. Just because he wasn’t shouting the odds doesn’t mean he wasn’t beavering away. He provided the legislative framework – labyrinthine at that – for Scotland’s first attempt at devolution.

Politics should be dull. When it’s exciting it’s dangerous. With Smith as prime minister, an Iraq War would have been less likely.

Unlikely fact: supposedly boring Smith’s grandfather pretty much shared a name with Hollywood heartthrob Cary Grant (real name Archibald Leach). That wasn’t the only remarkable thing about Archibald Leitch. As a two-year-old, he survived a cholera outbreak that killed every adult and older child in the Kintyre village of Tarbert. He went on to live till 87.

Our man, yon fella’s grandson, started life on 13 September 1938, 50 miles north of Tarbert at Dalmally. Soon after, his mother took him to Islay, where his father was schoolmaster at Portnahaven, before relocating to Ardrishaig.

Truly blessed

According to biographer Andy McSmith, this “resilient family and tightly-knit community” informed Smith’s worldview, which saw it as “incumbent on those blessed by fortune to take the larger share of social responsibility”.

After secondary school in Dunoon, Smith enrolled at Glasgow Yoonie, studying history then law. After joining the university Labour Club – of which he became chairman – he honed his skills in student debates, winning (with his friend, the future First Minister of Scotland, Donald Dewar), a Scotsman trophy and, in 1962, the Observer Mace competition.

Even before that, aged 23, Smith had tried for a parliamentary seat at a by-election in 1961 in East Fife, a constituency he contested again in 1964, being roundly defeated each time by the Unionist Party. The what now?

Smith never held extreme ideals and, indeed, his pragmatic approach in a May Day speech in Glasgow in 1963 greatly impressed Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour leader who was so centrist he became invisible.

In 1963, Smith became a solicitor and, in 1967, an advocate, supplementing his income by working as a lawyer for Glasgow tabloids, a role that involved skill at compromise and risk assessment.

At the 1970 general election he was elected MP for North Lanarkshire and, a year later, uncharacteristically defied the whips in joining 69 Labour MPs led by Roy Jenkins – and including all the Euro-suits and anti-leftists that later split to form the Social Democratic Party – to vote for entry to the European Communities.

In 1976, as Minister of State at the Privy Council Office, Smith piloted devolution proposals through the Commons. It was said that this “took up more parliamentary time than any [bill] since the granting of independence to India”.

Smith’s star was quickly rising.

In the shadows

In the 1983 general election, he received over 50 per cent of the vote in Monklands East, though Labour lost badly across the board. In 1987, after another general election defeat, Neil Kinnock – who had passionately opposed the devolution bill – made him Shadow Chancellor.

Following a fourth consecutive defeat in 1992, Smith succeeded Kinnock as Labour leader, winning 91% of the vote in a campaign run by Robin Cook.

The Herald:

Ironically, some had blamed tax rises in Smith’s “Shadow Budget” for Labour losing the election. As Andy McSmith put it: “The middle classes in the south of England do not take pride in the burdens of citizenship as Smith did.”

Should all this sound over-worthy, we should point out that Smith was a convivial fellow and, at times, an irreverent speaker. During one parliamentary debate, he described the Government’s calamitous script as “too much for Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em” (a television sitcom, M’lud, featuring a fellow in a beret who frequently trips over things and whose cat is prone to doing “a whoopsie” in places not designed for lavatorial excess).

Under Smith, Labour started leading the polls by a mile. On 5 May 1994, the Conservatives suffered badly in council elections. On 11 May 1994, Smith suffered his second heart attack. After his first, in 1988, Smith had changed his lifestyle: 1,000-calorie diet; cutting out rich foods and fine wines; giving up smoking. Enough to get anyone down, so he went up: Munro bagging. Lost three stones.

Alas, on his second heart attack, he lost his life at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. Only a fortnight earlier, he’d visited the accident and emergency department to campaign against its closure.

'An honest man'

On 20 May 1994, following a public funeral service in Cluny Parish Church, Edinburgh, attended by 1,000 people, Smith was buried in a private family service on Iona, among the ancient tombs of early kings. His grave is marked with the words of Alexander Pope: “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”

In the House of Commons, Tory Prime Minister John Major paid tribute, confiding that he and Smith “would share a drink: sometimes tea, sometimes not tea”.

Smith’s biographer Mark Stuart maintains that Smith would have won a landslide victory at the 1997 general election. As it turned out, that honour went to Tony Blair, bringing peace and socialism to the world.