Peter Shore

Quality 0.50 · 0 views · Updated 2 months ago

British politician (1924–2001)

title: "Peter Shore" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1924-births", "2001-deaths", "alumni-of-king's-college,-cambridge", "british-eurosceptics", "british-secretaries-of-state-for-the-environment", "chairs-of-the-fabian-society", "deaths-from-chronic-obstructive-pulmonary-disease", "deaths-from-coronary-artery-disease", "labour-party-(uk)-mps-for-english-constituencies", "labour-party-(uk)-life-peers", "life-peers-created-by-elizabeth-ii", "members-of-the-privy-council-of-the-united-kingdom", "ministers-in-the-wilson-governments,-1964–1970", "parliamentary-private-secretaries-to-the-prime-minister", "people-educated-at-quarry-bank-high-school", "people-from-great-yarmouth", "politicians-from-liverpool", "presidents-of-the-board-of-trade", "royal-air-force-personnel-of-world-war-ii", "transport-and-general-workers'-union-sponsored-mps", "uk-mps-1964–1966", "uk-mps-1966–1970", "uk-mps-1970–1974", "uk-mps-1974", "uk-mps-1974–1979", "uk-mps-1979–1983", "uk-mps-1983–1987", "uk-mps-1987–1992", "uk-mps-1992–1997"] description: "British politician (1924–2001)" topic_path: "history" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Shore" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary British politician (1924–2001) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox officeholder"]

Field	Value
honorific-prefix
name	The Lord Shore of Stepney
honorific-suffix
image	Petershore.jpg
office	Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
leader	Neil Kinnock
term_start	31 October 1983
term_end	13 July 1987
predecessor	John Silkin
successor	Frank Dobson
office1	Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
leader1	Neil Kinnock
term_start1	31 October 1983
term_end1	26 October 1984
predecessor1	Peter Archer (Trade)
Stanley Orme (Industry)
successor1	John Smith
office2	Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
leader2	Michael Foot
term_start2	8 December 1980
term_end2	31 October 1983
predecessor2	Denis Healey
successor2	Roy Hattersley
office3	Shadow Foreign Secretary
leader3	James Callaghan
term_start3	14 July 1979
term_end3	8 December 1980
predecessor3	Francis Pym
successor3	Denis Healey
office4	Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment
leader4	James Callaghan
term_start4	4 May 1979
term_end4	14 July 1979
predecessor4	Michael Heseltine
successor4	Roy Hattersley
office5	Secretary of State for the Environment
primeminister5	James Callaghan
term_start5	8 April 1976
term_end5	4 May 1979
predecessor5	Tony Crosland
successor5	Michael Heseltine
office6	Secretary of State for Trade
primeminister6	Harold Wilson
term_start6	4 March 1974
term_end6	8 April 1976
predecessor6	Peter Walker (Trade and Industry)
successor6	Edmund Dell
office7	Shadow Minister for Europe
leader7	Harold Wilson
term_start7	19 October 1971
term_end7	19 April 1972
predecessor7	Harold Lever
successor7	Michael Foot
office8	Minister without Portfolio
primeminister8	Harold Wilson
term_start8	6 October 1969
term_end8	19 June 1970
predecessor8	George Thomson
successor8	The Lord Drumalbyn
office9	Secretary of State for Economic Affairs
primeminister9	Harold Wilson
term_start9	29 August 1967
term_end9	6 October 1969
predecessor9	Michael Stewart
successor9	Anthony Crosland (Minister of State)
office10	Member of Parliament
for Bethnal Green and Stepney
Stepney (1964–1974)
Stepney and Poplar (1974–1983)
term_start10	15 October 1964
term_end10	8 April 1997
predecessor10	Stoker Edwards
successor10	Oona King
office11	Member of the House of Lords
status11	Lord Temporal
termlabel11	Life peerage
term_start11	5 June 1997
term_end11	24 September 2001
birth_name	Peter David Shore
birth_date
birth_place	Great Yarmouth, England
death_date
death_place	London, England
party	Labour
alma_mater	King's College, Cambridge
spouse
children	4
caption	Shore in 1973
::

Peter David Shore, Baron Shore of Stepney, (20 May 1924 – 24 September 2001) was a British Labour Party politician and Cabinet minister, noted in part for his opposition to the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for over 30 years, from 1964 to 1997.

His idiosyncratic left-wing nationalism led to comparison with the French politician Jean-Pierre Chevènement. He was described in an obituary by the Conservative journalist Patrick Cosgrave as "Between Harold Wilson and Tony Blair, the only possible Labour Party leader of whom a Conservative leader had cause to walk in fear" and, along with Enoch Powell, "the most captivating rhetorician of the age".

Early life

Born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, Shore was the son of a Merchant Navy captain and was brought up in a middle-class environment. He attended Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool and, from there, went to King's College, Cambridge, to read History as an exhibitioner, where he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, a secret society with an elite membership. During the later stages of World War II he served in the Royal Air Force, spending most of his time in India.

Political career

He had specialised in political economy during part of his degree and joined the Labour Party in 1948. He spent the 1950s working for the party and, after two unsuccessful Parliamentary contests at St Ives in 1950 and Halifax in 1959, he was appointed as Head of the Labour Party's Research Department and took charge of the renewal of party policy following its third successive defeat in 1959. Shore was only briefly a follower of Hugh Gaitskell; his adherence to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 1958 led to a breach in relations for several years.

He became close to Harold Wilson after Wilson had been elected as party leader, and was the main author of the Labour Party manifesto for the 1964 general election. At the last minute, he was selected to fight for the safe seat of Stepney in the election, which he easily won.

After only a short spell on the backbenches, Wilson chose Shore to be Parliamentary Private Secretary, responsible for liaising between the Prime Minister and Labour MPs, though Denis Healey termed him "Harold's lapdog". Shore was responsible for drafting the 1966 and 1970 election manifestos. Shore's job as Wilson's PPS kept them in close contact and in August 1967, Shore became a member of the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Economic Affairs.

In government

This Department had been created by Wilson to undertake long-term planning of the economy. Shore declared immediately his belief in state-controlled economic planning, together with the regulation of prices and wages. Early in 1968, the responsibility for prices and incomes was transferred to another department. The Treasury had never approved of the creation of the Department for Economic Affairs and began reasserting its influence, depriving it of any significant power. The department was wound up in October 1969. At the same time, Shore sided with those in cabinet who were opposed to Barbara Castle's White Paper, In Place of Strife. In a conversation with Richard Crossman at the time, Wilson was frustrated with Shore: "I over-promoted him. He's no good".

Shore was retained in the Cabinet as a Minister without Portfolio and Deputy Leader of the House of Commons. He played a key part, behind the scenes, in planning the Labour Party's unsuccessful 1970 general election campaign. In opposition, Shore was appointed as spokesman on Europe, taking the lead in opposing Edward Heath's application to join the European Economic Community. Shore had already become convinced that membership of the EEC would be a disaster because it would stop the British government from taking necessary economic action. However, due to organisation by pro-EEC Labour backbenchers, Heath was able to steer his policy successfully through Parliament.

EEC

When Wilson returned to government in 1974, Shore was appointed as Secretary of State for Trade. His term in office was dominated by the renegotiation of the terms of British membership of the EEC, a pledge contained in the Labour manifesto as a preparation for a national referendum on membership; this compromise had reunited the Labour Party on the issue. Shore participated in the discussions without believing that any new terms would be acceptable, and during the referendum, he joined with other anti-EEC politicians in opposing membership.

The results of the 1975 Referendum, giving a two-to-one majority in favour of remaining a member of the EEC, damaged Shore along with the other 'dissenting ministers'. His inclination to support an autarkic economy ruled him out of consideration as a new Chancellor of the Exchequer, but Shore was moved to Secretary of State for the Environment by new Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1976. This move was a promotion but involved him in considerable political controversy. He called on local authorities to cut spending and waste, and criticised the trade unions representing local authority staff for failure to support modernisation. Shore also launched a campaign to revitalise the inner cities of Britain.

Nuclear deterrent

Shore became a fervent advocate of the British nuclear deterrent for the last three decades of his life, but in 1958 he had been an active member of CND. In his 1966 book Entitled to Know, he was critical of the Nassau Agreement with the United States under which Britain's nuclear submarines were, except in a national emergency, permanently assigned to NATO. Regarding dependence on NATO as limiting Britain's freedom of action, Shore negatively compared Britain's nuclear strategy to that of France:

...after the cancellation of Blue Streak...that, failing the development of a major new British weapons system, we hadn't, and could not in future possess, a genuine independent nuclear capacity.}}

Shore had always been implacably opposed to any suggestion of British participation in the Vietnam War, both as PPS and in Cabinet he had encouraged Wilson to distance himself more explicitly from American foreign policy. By the mid-1970s, while continuing to condemn American foreign policy in Vietnam and Chile, he had become more supportive of NATO and the United States.

Labour leadership candidate

When the Labour Party went into opposition in 1979, Shore was made Shadow Foreign Secretary, having recanted on his previous support for CND. He was persuaded to stand as a candidate in the election of a new party leader in November 1980 by Michael Foot, who thought he was the best-placed soft-left candidate to defeat Denis Healey. The Times branded him the initial favourite.

Shadow Cabinet

He fought for the leadership again after Foot resigned, but obtained a dismal vote of 3%, being unsupported by any Constituency Labour Party. Shore served as Shadow Leader of the House of Commons for four years under Neil Kinnock but his influence with the leadership was negligible and he was not re-elected to the Shadow cabinet in 1985. He stood down from the front bench in 1987 and thereafter served on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, devoting himself to European Union questions. Edward Pearce wrote in his Guardian obituary of Shore that "he had now become a right-wing figure, cluckingly approved of by Conservatives".

Tony Blair selected him as a senior Labour statesman as his nominee for the Committee on Standards in Public Life when it was set up in 1994.

Backbenches and retirement

After several attempts in his constituency party to deselect him, he finally stood down from the House of Commons at the 1997 general election, and in the dissolution honours he was made a life peer, being created Baron Shore of Stepney, of Stepney in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets on 5 June 1997.

In contrast to Pearce's assertion that Shore had become a "right-wing figure", Chris Mullin quoted Shore in 1997 as saying: "I still believe in state intervention, a good measure of equality, full employment." Mullin described Shore as alienated from New Labour and quoted his criticism: "I like Tony Blair. I think he is probably right about wanting to put a certain distance between the party and the unions, but I'm offended by New Labour's constant repudiation of our past."

His book Separate Ways (2000) advocated a multi-speed Europe, with some countries as merely associate members, so as to allow the centre to forge a political union at its own pace.

Personal life and death

On 27 September 1948, Shore married Dr Elizabeth Catherine Wrong, daughter of the Canadian historian Edward Murray Wrong. Known as Liz, she was the Deputy Chief Medical Officer of England from 1977 to 1985, and in this role and later positions she championed women's career progression in medicine. They had two daughters, Thomasina and Tacy, both retired teachers, and two sons, Crispin, who is Professor of Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Piers, who died in 1977.

On 12 July 2001, Lord Shore collapsed in the House of Lords shortly after speaking in a debate on monetary policy. He received resuscitation and was taken to St Thomas' Hospital. He died there from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease on 24 September 2001, aged 77.

References

Bibliography

Entitled to Know, MacGibbon & Kee (1966)
Europe: the way back, Fabian Society (1973)
Leading the Left, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1993)
Separate Ways, Duckworth (2000)

References

(23 April 1998). "The Financial Statement and Budget Report 1998-99". [[Hansard]].
(26 September 2001). "Lord Shore of Stepney". The Independent.
Crick, Martin. (2005). "Shore, Peter David, Baron Shore of Stepney (1924–2001), politician".
Pearce, Edward. (26 September 2001). "Lord Shore of Stepney". The Guardian.
link. (3 March 2016 , Archives in London and the M25 area)
[http://politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/lab66.htm "Time for Decision"] {{Webarchive. link. (13 July 2017 , - Text of the 1966 Labour Party manifesto, Political Science Resources website.)
[http://politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/lab70.htm "Now Britain's Strong - Let's Make It Great to Live In"] {{Webarchive. link. (9 May 2017 , - Text of the 1970 Labour Party manifesto, Political Science Resources website.)
Peter Shore. (1966). "Entitled to Know". MacGibbon & Kee.
Peter Shore. (1966). "Entitled to Know". MacGibbon & Kee.
Peter Shore. (1993). "Leading the Left". Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
(May 2022). "World Affairs".
(26 September 2001). "Obituary: Lord Shore of Stepney".
{{London Gazette. (10 June 1997)
(2011). "A Walk-On Part: Diaries 1994–1999". Profile Books.
Warren, Penny. (2022-03-18). "Dr Liz Shore obituary".
(13 July 2001). "Lord Shore 'stable' after collapse". [[BBC News]].

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

Peter Shore

Early life

Political career

In government

EEC

Nuclear deterrent

Labour leadership candidate

Shadow Cabinet

Backbenches and retirement

Personal life and death

References

Bibliography

Archives

References