The former deputy leader helped to make the party electable again but became increasingly disillusioned under Tony Blair.
On April Fools’ Day 1992 an exuberant Roy Hattersley took to the stage in his home city of Sheffield and told a pumped-up Labour Party rally they were about to take power “because we have caught the spirit of the time”.
Eight days later, those dreams were in tatters as the Tories, to the surprise of the pollsters, chalked up a fourth successive general election triumph.
The following week party leader Neil Kinnock and Mr Hattersley, his deputy, resigned. It was a bitter end to his career in frontline politics for Labour’s “nearly man”.
Having failed to gain the leadership of the party he loved, he spent much of Labour’s wilderness years of the 1980s battling to keep the party together just as ideological infighting threatened to tear it apart.
When his natural allies such as Roy Jenkins and David Owen broke away to form the SDP, he remained as the torch bearer of the Labour right.
His “dream ticket” alliance with Mr Kinnock, the fiery champion of the “soft left”, saw off the challenge of the hard-left Militant Tendency.
He was credited with helping to steer the party away from the policies which had made it unelectable in the eyes many voters – including its support for unilateral nuclear disarmament and its opposition to the European Community.
But when Tony Blair, who had once worked for him, finally succeeded in regaining No 10 for Labour, he became one of his most outspoken critics, accusing him of abandoning its socialist principles.
As a passionate advocate for the causes of redistribution and equality, particularly in the education system, he was dismayed by New Labour’s wholesale embrace of the market economy.
A noted gourmand and lover of fine wines – like his mentor Mr Jenkins – he combined his expressed egalitarianism with a dandyish taste for expensive, if rather loud, shirts, leading some to dismiss him as a “Champagne socialist”.
When, in later years, he pulled out of an appearance on the BBC’s Have I Got News For You, he was mocked by the producers who replaced him with a tub of lard.
To his admirers, however, he was an undoubted talent whose mettle was never truly tested at the highest levels of government owing to the timing of his political career – of his 33 years as an MP, more than two decades were spent on the opposition benches.
As an avowed “Jenkins-ite” he was distrusted by Harold Wilson, who refused to bring him into the Cabinet, but when Mr Jenkins quit over Labour’s growing opposition to Europe, splitting the party, Mr Hattersley refused to join him.
For some on the pro-Europe right it was an act of betrayal, earning him the contemptuous nickname “Rattersley” – one of many such taunts that he was to endure.
A prolific author and journalist, his passion for politics was tempered by his urge to write, his desire for a good lunch, his devotion to Sheffield Wednesday and his yearning to play cricket for his native Yorkshire.
Once asked what his two great ambitions were, he replied: “To open the batting for Yorkshire and to become home secretary” which prompted the retort: “You’d better start getting your pads on then…”
The author of more than 20 books – including novels, memoirs, histories and biographies – over the years he penned countless articles and was a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Spectator, Punch and The Listener.
Roy Sydney George Hattersley was born on December 28 1932, in Sheffield, into a family once described as part of the city’s “respectable, working-class Labour aristocracy”.
His mother, Enid, was a major figure in the local party who eventually rose to become lord mayor and who ensured he joined the Labour League of Youth as soon as he was old enough.
His father, Frederick, was a Labour-voting local government official and former Roman Catholic priest.
It was only after they were both dead that Mr Hattersley learned the full truth of their relationship, the couple having run off together just two weeks after his father officiated at her wedding to her first husband.
After attending the local Wisewood Primary School, he won a place at the prestigious Sheffield City Grammar where he enjoyed playing cricket and tennis.
Even from an early age politics was to play a major role – he turned down a place to read English at the University of Leeds, opting instead for Hull after being advised he should study economics if he wanted a political career.
He was active in student politics, becoming chairman of the National Association of Labour Student Organisations, and on his return to Sheffield after graduating, aged 25, he won election as the city’s youngest councillor.
His pursuit of a career on the national stage saw him finally gain selection as the party’s candidate for the marginal Labour seat of Birmingham Sparkbrook.
In the 1964 general election, he entered Parliament for the first time, holding the seat with a majority of under 1,300, as Labour under Mr Wilson narrowly took power from the Tories.
Despite his obvious talents, his Jenkins-ite affiliations meant his progress through the ministerial ranks was slow, eventually rising to deputy to defence secretary Denis Healey in 1969.
With Mr Healey indisposed in hospital, one of his first acts in his new post was to sign the order authorising the deployment of British troops on the streets of Northern Ireland.
After Labour’s defeat to the Tories in 1970 general election, Mr Hattersley was among 69 rebels, led by Mr Jenkins, to vote with the Conservatives in favour of Britain joining the European Economic Community.
However, when Mr Jenkins quit as shadow chancellor and deputy leader, Mr Hattersley stayed put finally earning promotion from Mr Wilson to shadow education secretary, a portfolio he particularly coveted.
His move led to charges of careerism from some erstwhile allies on the Labour right; David Owen once witheringly describing him as the “acceptable face of opportunism”.
It was a charge which surfaced again in 1976 when Mr Wilson, by then back in No 10, unexpectedly resigned as prime minister.
Mr Hattersley had been expected to back either Mr Jenkins, back in the fold as home secretary, or his other great mentor, environment secretary Tony Crosland, for leader.
Instead he chose to support James Callaghan after being persuaded neither of the other candidates from the right could win. When he approached Mr Crosland to explain his decision he was roundly told to “f*** off”.
The ultimate victor Mr Callaghan was, however, pleased, finally elevating him to the Cabinet as prices secretary, a post he did not enjoy, despite presiding over a fall in then-rampant inflation to single figures.
His ministerial career abruptly ended three years later, when he was 46, when Margaret Thatcher led the Tories back to power in the 1979 general election consigning Labour to years of opposition and internecine warfare.
In the aftermath of defeat, Mr Hattersley ran the campaign by his old boss, Mr Healey, to succeed Mr Callaghan only to see him defeated by the leftwinger Michael Foot.
Despite believing the new leader was “a good man in the wrong job” who could never become prime minister, Mr Hattersley accepted the post of shadow home secretary.
His view was apparently vindicated when Mrs Thatcher stormed to an election landslide in 1983. By then Labour had been torn apart by the defection of Mr Jenkins and the so-called Gang of Four to form the SDP.
Always the Labour man, Mr Hattersley never contemplated joining them, despite their obvious ideological affinities, choosing instead to fight on within the party.
However, their departure meant he had no real constituency among the depleted ranks of the Labour right when he threw his hat in the ring to succeed Mr Foot.
Instead it was Mr Kinnock, with the overwhelming support of the constituency parties and the trade union block vote, who triumphed while Mr Hattersley was left with the consolation prize of deputy leader.
Despite being presented as a “dream ticket” alliance bringing together the party’s left and right, it was an uneasy alliance, with the two men having little in common.
For all the extravagant public displays of unity, the tensions would occasionally break to the surface with Mr Kinnock once dismissing his deputy as a “good light essayist”.
Not one to rock the boat, Mr Hattersley loyally ploughed on while enjoying some success in guiding the younger man away from more left-wing positions such as unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from Europe.
The two also combined to expel hard-left, Trotskyite “entryists” from Militant Tendency who had taken control of the party in Liverpool.
After Labour suffered a third straight election defeat in 1987, Mr Hattersley signed a £150,000 book contract, leading some to question his commitment to the cause.
He nevertheless carried on and by the time of the 1992 election he, like Mr Kinnock, believed they had done enough to take the party back to power.
Defeat then to John Major’s rejuvenated Tory Party came as a deeply painful shock. Shortly after resigning as deputy leader, he announced that he would be standing down as an MP at the next general election.
Following Mr Blair’s 1997 election triumph he was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Hattersley of Sparkbrook, but while he have may have helped lay the ground for Labour’s return to office he was increasingly unhappy at the outcome.
While Mr Kinnock, the one-time left-wing firebrand, enthusiastically rowed in behind the new regime, Lord Hattersley railed against what he saw as its abandonment of socialism, complaining “Blair’s Labour Party is not the Labour Party I joined”.
Withdrawal from frontline politics did at least give him more time to concentrate on his writing, with the books and articles pouring out at a phenomenal rate.
In 2013, it was announced that he and his wife, Molly, were divorcing after 57 years of marriage having been separated for five years. They had no children. Later the same year he married Maggie Pearlstine, his literary agent.
