Tributes to Sir Tony Lloyd

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

Tony was one of the best of us: a decent, kind man dedicated to helping people. As we have heard today, often he was unassuming and he never showboated the brilliant work he did. Such was his commitment to public service, he rarely felt comfortable taking personal credit for the great work he did, preferring to quietly and furiously work in the background to get done what needed to be done. His career was never about him but about the people he was trying to lift up. Because of that, Tony was loved.

There are so many stories and messages of warmth from his friends and colleagues, and I have just a few that I want to share. Ian Stewart, a close friend who was formerly the MP for Eccles and then Mayor of Salford, said:

“Tony phoned me before Christmas (he must have been in hospital when he phoned, although he didn’t mention that). He said he wanted arrange a meal and a drink with me. I explained that Mez was ill and we thought she might have Covid. I suggested that he and I should get together as we regularly did either between Christmas and New Year or early January. He agreed but then calmly said he loved me and Mez and that I should let her know that.

First and foremost Tony was a true and close friend of 50 years. He was a real trade union socialist, with a good heart and a strong desire to help those in need.

He was a Statistician by trade lecturing at the University of Salford when we first met. People were always bemused when they found out he was good at maths. Tony was a product of the post war Labour Government’s Welfare State and Education System. Which he never forgot.

I ran his campaign to become the Chair of the parliamentary trade union group.

I ran his campaign to become the Chair of the parliamentary Labour Party.

I had great respect for him as a politician and dear friend.

In 1988, Tony was the first Politician to be interested in and support the creation of the synergistic social partnership model for good governance and socially just resolution of complex problems.

Tony and I were invited to attend our friend Chan Singhs inauguration as the Temple President of a Manchester Sikh Temple and we wore Turbans together. We looked the part.

He was part of that small group of politicians who were underestimated; underrated; and underused in Parliament. His quiet, calm manner belied the gut instinct and passionate reaction to inequality and lack of social justice experienced by oppressed communities, whether at work, in the community, in the UK or Sub Saharan Africa. He had been the Minister for Sub Saharan Africa in the Blair Government. He was a genuine internationalist, and understood the real global implications and need to battle against neoliberalism at home and abroad.

A genuine man of the people. And one of the few politicians I will miss sharing a meal and a drink with.”

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), who cannot be here today as he is recovering from an operation, asked me to share this funny story:

“He was so special and a warm character but there was also a very naughty side to him and I’d like to share this story about him.

I’d missed breakfast and I was really quite hungry and was hoping the delicious jerk chicken would be on offer and headed off to “The Debate”, the cafeteria in Portcullis House in eager anticipation.

But imagine my disappointment when walking up to the entrance to cafeteria and looking up at menu board to see the row of usually packed canteen serving stations totally empty, no staff and no customers. There’d been some sort of problem and services were disrupted and there’d be no lunch in the Debate today.

I tried to take in the full extent of this lunchtime disaster.

I was standing there, open mouthed in disbelief, with my hand still outstretched in automatic pilot poised to pick up a tray from the pile to put my non existent food on, as if in total denial and unable to compute, whilst simultaneously scouring the sad notice of temporary closure that only served to reinforce my disappointment and with it the dawning realisation that I’d be eating somewhere else today.

I must have had a look on my face of complete bewilderment and disappointment in equal measure, when my friend Tony Lloyd, who had observed my frozen form as he made his way through PCH, quietly walked up to my side, still invisible to me, and said very gently and so caringly, with a wicked twinkle in his eye: ‘is there a daughter we could ring?’

Rest in peace Tony.”

Paul Dennett, the Mayor of Salford, said:

“Sir Tony Lloyd MP was a great man, a person & politician of great integrity, someone who often did the right thing quietly, without fear or favour, a great friend of Salford & its peoples. My thoughts & prayers are with Tony’s family & friends at this time”.

Outside the world of politics, Tony’s real and unending love was for his family, and it was in that context that I first met him. At the age of five, in Stretford, he was my first ever MP, although I did not know that at the time, when I was running around his and his wife Judith’s house, driving everyone mad playing “She-Ra: Princess of Power” with his daughter Siobhan, who was my friend at school. We were usually having a row about who would be in the role of She-Ra that day, causing Tony or Judith to have to come and sort out the problem diplomatically.

I remember a house and family full of love and warmth, and a family who often supported mine. It was only years later that I realised what Tony actually did for a job. That was important because, growing up, there was a tendency to believe that MPs were in some special class of their own, and that people from backgrounds like mine could not be MPs. But Tony was different. He was one of us, a man of the people, and a proud member and supporter of the Irish diaspora in Manchester. He gave me the courage to believe that if he had become an MP and could serve to help people, then maybe—just maybe—people like me could do it, too.

I send all of Salford’s deepest love and prayers to Judith, Siobhan, Angharad, Kieron, Ali, Carmen, Carys and all Tony’s family and loved ones. To Tony, I say: “You were an inspiration to all of us in this place. If we can be just one ounce of the good man that you were then I know the world will be far better, kinder place.”