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Terry Lewis, who has died aged 90, was a hard-working if touchy Left-winger who was Labour MP for Worsley, Greater Manchester, from 1983 to 2005.
A friend and contemporary of Jeremy Corbyn, he voted against the Iraq War, opposed nuclear weapons and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and as a patron of the League Against Cruel Sports was a leader of the campaign against foxhunting. He was one of Labour’s most dedicated Eurosceptics.
Asked in retirement how he felt about Corbyn’s decision, as Labour leader, not to sing the National Anthem, he replied: “I’ve never sung it in my life. But I love the country. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”
Lewis – who did his national service with the RAMC – added: “I wear a red poppy. I have been a member of the British Legion for years. I am not a pacifist, but I’m not a warmonger either.”
Named Britain’s most motivated constituency MP in 1989, Lewis took great pride in his birthplace of Salford. In 1984 he sponsored a motion deploring Margaret Thatcher’s “offensive” remarks about the dialects in Coronation Street. He was a leading critic of her abolition of the Greater Manchester Council (GMC), accusing her of a “vendetta against local government and local democracy”.
Terence Lewis was born on December 29 1935, the son of Andrew Lewis, a docker, and the former Mary Redfern, and educated at Mount Carmel School, Salford.
As a 19-year-old soldier, he was exposed to germ warfare tests at Porton Down. When in 2019 Boris Johnson’s government promised to compensate service personnel exposed to radiation in nuclear testing in 1950s without their knowledge, Lewis declared the decision “long overdue. These veterans have been ignored for too long by all governments.”
From 1960 to 1982, he was a power station charge engineer. After being selected for his seat, he was moved into personnel.
Lewis joined the Labour Party in 1970, and the next year was elected to Kearsley council. After Kearsley’s absorption into Bolton, he was deputy leader of the borough’s Labour group, and in 1982-83 chaired its education committee.
When John Roper, Labour MP for Farnworth, defected to the SDP, Lewis was selected in his place. Prior to the 1983 election the seat disappeared in boundary changes, and Lewis took the new seat of Worsley – part of Salford – by 4,139 votes over a Conservative, Roper finishing a strong third.
At Westminster, he sponsored a Bill against the dumping of nuclear waste, voted against the Defence Estimates, and served on the Select Committee hearing objections to the Channel Tunnel Bill.
He told MPs that the operation to find more victims of the Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley had been had been an “expensive fiasco”, and asked Mrs Thatcher to investigate claims of low morale in the Greater Manchester Police.
Lewis campaigned for a crackdown on premium-rate chat lines because teenagers were running up huge bills, and, with his fellow Catholic Frank Cook, called for a Select Committee to examine the abortion issue, “to avoid unseemly clashes between fanatics on both sides of the argument”.
Prior to the passing of the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act, he tabled a motion calling for the humane destruction scheme of all breeds of dogs “specifically raised for illegal dog fighting, namely the Japanese tosa and American pit bull terriers”.
Labour’s landslide victory in 1997 brought Lewis his largest majority – 17,741 – but set in train his disenchantment with the party. He had expected a “sea-change”, but reckoned Tony Blair was simply continuing with Thatcherism.
He voted against cuts to single parents’ benefits, part-privatisation of the National Air Traffic System and student tuition fees. Increasingly he concentrated on constituency issues, but he condemned a 75p-a-week increase in the state pension as “shameful”.
Lewis stood down at the 2005 election, being succeeded by Barbara Keeley, but continued to speak out. In 2010 he resigned from the party, saying it had “lost its soul” and missed a historic opportunity to repair the “damage” done by Tory governments.
“I didn’t send in a letter of resignation because I would have needed a publisher,” he said. The final straw had been the expenses scandal exposed by The Daily Telegraph; “What some MPs have been up to is an absolute disgrace.”
When Corbyn surprisingly captured the Labour leadership in 2015, Lewis was quick to rejoin. “Hopefully the new leadership might be a new dawn,” he said. “Jeremy is an old friend of mine. I share a lot of his political views.”
Terry Lewis married Audrey Clarke in 1958. They had two sons, one of whom survives him.
Terry Lewis, born December 29 1935, died July 20 2026
