Lord Evans of Parkside: MP who fought for Labour's soul in the turbulent 1980s and whose work helped make the party electable again

His working class and Party credentials were impeccable - an excellent engineer, he was highly regarded in the Swan Hunter yard for his skill and hard work

Evans: Labour's top priority, he believed, should be full employment (PA)

Generally, but particularly when political parties are in a state of electoral adversity, politicians with a high media profile are by no means the most important movers and shakers within the high echelons of the party. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s John Evans was a figure of huge significance, not least because he was chairman of the Labour Party from 1991-92, in the run-up to a general election in which a Labour victory under Neil Kinnock had been widely anticipated.

His working class and Party credentials were impeccable, and he toiled effectively to bring sanity to a party in turmoil that had been riven by factions. He straddled left and right, and though the 1992 election was eventually won by John Major, without Evans' work after the 1983 and 1987 elections I doubt that Labour would ever have become electable.

He was born in Kent, where his father was killed in a mining accident. The family moved to Tyneside, his mother was left to bring up John and his two sisters; there was no compensation. Recalling her struggle, he would show flashes of anger in the Chamber of the House of Commons if any MP disparaged one-parent families.

His mother was determined that he should not go down the pit, and when he left Jarrow Central School he went to the shipyards, becoming an apprentice fitter at Swan Hunter when he was 16. Called up at 18, he served as a Sapper then, after completing his apprenticeship, was a ship's engineer for four years with the Merchant Navy. Sharing a Commons office with me and two other colleagues, Evans would reminisce about his formative experiences in India and the Far East. “I knew poverty, but it was as nothing compared to the poverty in the rest of the world.”

Returning from seafaring, Evans became active in the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEU) and was elected treasurer of Jarrow Constituency Labour Party. His contemporary Don Dixon, later MP for Jarrow, told me that Evans was an excellent engineer, highly regarded in the yard for his skill and hard work. In 1959 he married Joan Robson, a marvellously supportive wife, as I know at first hand from her visits to the European Parliament, where her husband and I were MEPs.

In 1969 he was elected Leader of the Hebburn Urban District Council, and in 1973 to the South Tyneside Metropolitan District Council. In 1990, when Margaret Thatcher had fallen and it looked as if a Labour government might be elected, I asked Evans about his priorities for such a government. Without hesitation – he was laconic and to the point – he replied, “Jobs. Then restoring dignity to local government.” He was one of the instigators of Labour's Local Government Conference.

Since he had performed impressively as an AEU convenor, he was asked by John Boyd, the formidable and manipulative General Secretary of the union, to stand for the Parliamentary Panel, to which he was elected. This meant that the AEU would sponsor him for a seat if he could get on a shortlist. After Labour's general election defeat in 1970, the AEU-sponsored Fred Lee retired, and Evans was elected to Newton in Lancashire in February 1974.

For a while that meant a triangular life – Jarrow, south Lancashire and Westminster. “That was hard on the children,” he told me. “My youngest couldn't quite come to terms with the dialect and insisted on sticking rigidly to his Tyneside accent, which meant that local kids couldn't understand him. Luckily, for all three children, the TV series When The Boat Comes In became a big hit, and they became heroes of the village.”

After the 1975 Europe referendum, Evans and I were among eight MPs and four peers who were selected by Labour to become Members of the European Parliament. It was a tribute to his qualities as chairman that although at that time he was anti-EEC, other MEPs chose him as chairman of the European Parliament's Regional Committee, which meant visiting all parts of the European Community. I know from Italian, French and other European MEPs – and not just socialists – of the high regard in which he was held.

After the Queens Speech on 25 November 1975 he criticised the government's approach to unemployment: “I represent a large constituency in the North-West, and I have lived most of my life on Tyneside... Not many honourable members appreciate just what unemployment means, particularly to a man with a wife and young family to support. Unemployment as an economic weapon is unacceptable to me and my constituency party.”

In 1978 Evans left the European Parliament to become a Government Whip – which, he said, given the majority of –1, “life on a knife edge.” When Michael Foot succeeded James Callaghan as Party Leader, he chose Evans as his PPS. “I always swear,” he told me, “that if Michael or I had known what we were letting ourselves in for, neither of us would have taken the job. Yes I don't regret it for a minute because he became one of the biggest influences in my life. I love Michael: he is one of the truest socialists I have ever met – he would have made a wonderful prime minister.”

From 1983-87, Evans was No 2 in the Opposition employment team. He told the Leader, Neil Kinnock, that he would not continue on the Front Bench because he wanted to concentrate on constitutional changes to ensure that the National Executive became a responsible body, and to put the Party in good shape.

It was a selfless decision – but then John Evans was something rare in the sphere of politics – a selfless man, and without his work it would have been immensely more difficult for Labour to win the 1997 General Election.

John Evans, engineer, trade unionist and politician: born Kent 19 October 1930; MP for Newton, February 1974–1983, St Helens North 1983–97; Chairman of Labour Party 1991–92; cr. 1997 Life Peer, of St Helens; married 1959 Joan Slater (one daughter, two sons); died 5 March 2016.