My friend Peter Jackson, who has died aged 91, was a Labour MP in the time of Harold Wilson, contributing to a raft of progressive social reforms despite a short period in the Commons. Outside politics, he had a varied career that included university teaching in sociology, adult education and industrial studies.
Born in Sheffield, Peter was the son of Len Jackson, an undertaker who became a rating officer for the Sheffield local authority, and his wife, Mary (nee Manyer), who ran a car hire company.
He attended Nether Edge grammar school, where he took an interest in the Common Wealth party and read what was then the Manchester Guardian. Leaving school at the age of 16, Peter trained as an accountant in a Sheffield firm.
He was conscripted into the RAF when he turned 18, and was posted to a Norfolk airbase, where a current affairs tutor suggested he should go to university. He went to Durham in 1949 to study sociology, with the aim of becoming a social worker. Instead, he left to take a teaching diploma at University College Leicester (now Leicester University), then registered for a PhD on John Stuart Mill while a research assistant at Liverpool University. He completed it in 1973 at Hull University.
In Leicester he joined the Labour party, and became its candidate for High Peak in Derbyshire at the 1966 general election. He won the seat – its first Labour MP. He was the sole party member to vote against the Prices and Incomes Act 1966, which sought to stifle wage rises to control inflation, to the displeasure of Wilson, the prime minister. He was involved as a whip in the private members’ bills leading to the Abortion Act 1967 and the Divorce Reform Act 1969, as well as the Sexual Offences Act 1967 on homosexuality. He lost his seat in 1970 and went back to Hull for two years, before another two as a tutor at the Open University. I was the Labour party agent for High Peak at both general elections of 1974, including February, when Peter unsuccessfully attempted to regain the seat.
He became a planning officer for South Yorkshire metropolitan council in 1974 but had a serious car accident in 1977. After recovery, he stood unsuccessfully as the 1979 Labour MEP candidate for Birmingham North.
Peter taught at Roma University in Lesotho from 1980 to 1984 before returning to adult teaching for the university at Hull and at Matlock for Nottingham University.
He was also director of the Access Committee charity in London, which was concerned with access for disabled people; and did work for a Welsh company manufacturing materials for the construction of houses for disabled people. He retired in 1992 but served on an industrial tribunal until the age of 70.
Peter left the Labour party with Tony Blair’s leadership, but rejoined in 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn was elected.
In retirement Peter and his second wife, Liz (nee Henderson), travelled often to Australia to visit family. He was taken ill while on a cruise and died in Panama.
He is survived by Liz and his stepson, Paul Guthrie.
