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| Affiliation | Independent Labour |
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| Name | Eddie Milne |
| Address |
Blyth, , United Kingdom |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
October 18, 1915
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| Died | March 23, 1983
(67 years)
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| Contributor | New Jerusalem |
| Last Modifed | New Jerusalem
Mar 18, 2012 12:59pm |
| Tags |
Scottish - Expelled - Union Member -
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| Info | A Scottish trade unionist, Milne was elected for the safe Labour seat of Blyth in Northumberland at a by-election in 1960. Milne was one of only a handful of North East MPs to be on the Left of the Labour Party and had a difficult relationship with the local Party establishment.
An already tense situation turned poisonous when Milne began to make serious accusations of corruption against leading Labour figures in the North East (most notably Andy Cunningham, the regional head of the powerful G&MWU union), against members of Blyth CLP. Milne effectively became a whistle-blower in what came to be known as the Poulson Affair (named for the corrupt architect at the centre of a complicated web of local government scandals) and his work was seemingly rewarded when several of the people he had accused of corruption (including Cunningham and the charismatic Newcastle political boss T. Dan Smith) were arrested and later convicted.
Milne's career took a turn for the surreal shortly before the February 1974 election when Cunningham, in an act of revenge as audacious as it was calculated, managed to orchestrate Milne's deselection while he was himself awaiting trial. Milne stood as an Independent Labour candidate against Ivor Richard - a Labour frontbencher parachuted into the area after his constituency had been abolished by boundary changes - and won easily. He was less fortunate in the second election of the year when he was narrowly defeated by John Ryman. His supporters enjoyed a degree of success in local elections in the mid 1970s, but this proved to be a last hurrah for Milne and his cause and when he ran again in 1979 he was convincingly defeated by Ryman. Milne left political life after his final defeat and moved back to his native Scotland.
Member of Parliament for Blyth 1960-1974
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