Lord Taverne, the former Labour MP who famously defeated his old party in a 1973 byelection before joining the SDP and later becoming a Liberal Democrat peer, has died at the age of 97.
Taverne fell out with the leftwing faction of his local Labour party in Lincoln over his support for British entry into the Common Market. After being deselected, he resigned his seat, stood as a Democratic Labour candidate, and won a spectacular byelection victory despite a heavyweight campaign by the national leadership to defeat him. The Guardian described him as 'Dick the Giant Killer'. He held the seat at the first general election of 1974 but lost it in the second, and never returned to the Commons.
Born in Sumatra to Dutch parents, Taverne moved to London in 1939 and was naturalised British at 21. He attended Charterhouse and Balliol College, Oxford, where he obtained a first in classics and chaired the Labour club. After studying for the bar, he contested Putney in 1959, losing, but was hand-picked by Hugh Gaitskell to fight a byelection in Lincoln in 1962, winning and retaining the seat through the 1960s. He served as a junior Home Office minister and Treasury minister, and as financial secretary to the Treasury in 1969.
After leaving the Commons, Taverne stood twice more unsuccessfully for the SDP in London before being created a Liberal Democrat peer in 1996. His political career was a precursor to Labour's 1980s internal strife and highlighted the divisions Europe has caused in British politics.
