UK Edition
Sir Trevor Jones, Liverpool politician nicknamed 'Jones the vote' for his campaigning flair – obituary
Sir Trevor Jones, who has died aged 89, was a Liverpool ship’s chandler who pioneered an ebullient campaigning style that brought the Liberals by-election victories in the early 1970s, and control of Liverpool council, which he led for several years.
Party president in 1972/73, his annus mirabilis, “Jones the Vote” perfected the art of getting councillors elected through community (to his critics “pavement”) politics based on close attention to local issues. These techniques won the Liberals control of Liverpool in 1973, retaining it for a decade. Jones led the council for five years from 1978 – and again for two months in 1987, after 47 Labour councillors were disqualified for setting an illegal rate.
Nationally, his greatest achievements were by-election victories at Sutton and Cheam in December 1972, when Graham Tope captured the seat on a 32 per cent swing from the Conservatives, and at Ripon by David Austick the following July.
Neither seat was held at the next election, though Sutton later returned to the Liberal Democrats. But Jones’ creation of a bandwagon effect by insisting the Liberals were going to win would be used with success a generation later by his lieutenant Chris Rennard. Another of Jones’ proteges, David Alton, won a by-election at Liverpool Edge Hill in 1979, and held the seat.
David Steel once told Jones: “I don’t think the party is quite ready for your methods.” “No,” he replied. “But they’re ready for my results.” In a party ambivalent about success, he was a breath of fresh air. He once ended a row in the Liberal Party Council by pulling a referee’s whistle from his pocket and blowing it.
Months before Sutton, Jones promised Jeremy Thorpe that he would deliver a majority larger than those of all the Liberal MPs combined, save for Jo Grimond who had a safe seat. He did it with 1,000 votes to spare.
Jones himself never came close to winning a parliamentary seat. He was tipped to take Toxteth from Labour in February 1974, but finished third, lamenting that he had spent too much time campaigning elsewhere.
An attempt to win the nomination at Orpington that October was seen off by Lady Avebury, wife of the former Liberal member Eric Lubbock. And though Jones was selected for Gillingham, he trailed in third.
His politics were Left of centre, but light years from the Trotskyism visited on Liverpool by Derek Hatton and his acolytes when they gained a majority.
Owen Trevor Jones was born at Dyserth, North Wales, on December 17 1926 and was brought up in Bootle. Having joined the Merchant Navy as a teenager, he took part in the Atlantic Convoys, and served in Singapore and Aden. After the war he became a £12-a-week rigger in Liverpool docks, then in 1961 borrowed £200 to acquire Robert A Dean, a small firm making dock fenders. He built it into the biggest fender-makers in the country, diversifying into ship’s chandlery and car upholstery.
He came into local politics when in 1966 his warehouse was threatened with demolition to make way for a ring road and he found that he had a gift for organising opposition and crafting protest leaflets. He was encouraged by Lord McAndrew, a former Conservative deputy speaker. As chairman of a conservation group fighting the replanning of Liverpool, Jones gave evidence to a House of Lords committee. Impressed, McAndrew urged him to work through the system.
Jones decided he was a Liberal, and in 1968 won a council seat. His campaigning style had such an impact that when the Liverpool Metropolitan district council was formed five years later, the Liberals took control on a pledge to hand over council housing to tenants’ co-operatives. Jones became its deputy leader and leader of the Liberal group on the parallel Merseyside County Council.
His style appealed to the radical Young Liberals, and in 1972 they secured his election as party president. That December he organised Tope’s election at Sutton & Cheam, one of the heaviest defeats the Conservatives had ever suffered.
Over the next year, apart from capturing Liverpool, his by-election campaigning ran Labour close at Chester-le-Street before capturing Ripon – having cancelled a Caribbean cruise to run the campaign.
At the 1973 Liberal Assembly Jones ruled out coalitions with other parties, a line he would take consistently until the Lib-Lab Pact with the Callaghan administration. He declared: “People will vote Liberal because they want a Liberal government, not because they want to see a political balancing act.”
At the start of 1974 Jones was involved in a misunderstanding with Thorpe. Cyril Smith had criticised his leadership; Jones rejected the criticism but Thorpe misunderstood and attacked the pair of them. When the Thorpe affair broke in 1976, Jones was one of the first senior Liberals to call for his removal.
The 1978 elections made Labour the largest party in Liverpool; the Liberals went into reluctant coalition with the Tories, with Jones leader of the council. The deadlock continued after the 1979 and 1980 elections, when Jones’s wife, now Lord Mayor, burst into tears after the council failed to settle political control.
Knighted in 1981, Jones was confronted by the Toxteth riots, which he blamed on “evil criminals and political agitators” from outside; locals blamed police harassment. Michael Heseltine’s subsequent stay in Toxteth won Jones over, saying: “Even his most severe critics have become admirers.” He urged the government to back Heseltine by subsidising employers to get local people into jobs – but reckoned crime, not unemployment, Toxteth’s greatest problem. That year, Jones backed Shirley Williams’ successful by-election campaign for the SDP in Crosby.
Continuing deadlock on the council had prevented reorganisation of Liverpool’s schools. Sir Keith Joseph secured agreement on an emergency plan involving closure of Croxteth comprehensive; parents occupied it, and pelted Jones and the education secretary with fruit.
Militant gained control of the Labour group in 1982, and a year later Labour took power, abolishing the office of Lord Mayor. Liverpool politics now turned nasty. Twenty-two Liberal councillors, Jones among them, were removed by the police after challenging Labour policy decisions taken at secret meetings.
Jones had to sell his Aston Martin because it kept being scratched. He bought an old van, and his wife urged him to quit. But when three teenagers chanting “Jones is a Fascist” beat him up, she said he would be wrong to give in.
Neil Kinnock initially defended Liverpool’s leaders against Jones’ charges that they were spending ratepayers’ money improperly. They refused to set a rate before the 1984 elections, and increased their majority. Labour raised further cash by selling mortgages on council houses to Banque Paribas for £30 million; Jones warned: “The cost to the city over the years is going to be enormous.”
In October 1985 Kinnock finally read the riot act to Militant, and 400 local businessmen met Jones and his Conservative counterpart to launch a fightback. He was now accusing Militant of a “reign of terror” toward council officials.
In March 1987 47 Labour councillors were barred from office, putting the Liberals back in power. Jones started turning the council’s finances round and his wife took the revived office of Lord Mayor, but fresh Labour candidates won that May’s elections.
Liberal fortunes waned in Liverpool despite Militant’s eventual eclipse; Jones remained group leader until 1991, retiring from the council after 23 years. In 2003, the Lib Dems having regained control, he made a comeback at 76, finally leaving in 2009.
Sir Trevor is survived by his wife, Doreen.
Sir Trevor Jones, born December 17 1926, died September 8 2016