Blair’s tribute as father Leo dies aged 89
TONY Blair’s father Leo died yesterday at the age of 89.
His son was with him to the end, the former prime minister’s office said last night.
Mr Blair, who pulled out of an engagement with Bill Clinton after his father fell seriously ill on Thursday, said he had been ‘privileged to have him as a dad’.
He added: ‘He was a remarkable man. Raised in a poor part of Glasgow, he worked his way up from nothing, with great ambitions dashed by serious illness on the very brink of their fulfilment.
‘He lost my mother, whom he adored, when she was still young. Yet despite it all he remained animated by an extraordinary spirit that was in him until the end.’
Leo Blair was born the illegitimate son of two middle-class travelling entertainers in 1923.
The social stigma, combined with the family’s hectic lifestyle, prompted his parents to give up their baby to the Blairs, who they met while on tour in Glasgow.
Shipyard worker James and his wife Mary, who had suffered two miscarriages and feared they would not be able to conceive, quickly became strongly attached to the little boy. Leo adopted the Blair surname and was prevented by Mary from even contacting his biological parents when they tried to reclaim him four years later.
He grew up in the Govan dockland area of Glasgow and left school to work as a copy boy for the Communist Party newspaper, The Daily Worker.
He became the secretary of the Scottish Young Communist League and served in the Army during the Second World War. After demobilisation, he studied law in his spare time to become a barrister and later a law lecturer in Australia and then at Durham University.
He switched to the Tories and rose to become chairman of the Durham Conservative Association only to see his dream of standing for Parliament scotched by a stroke at the age of 40.
Leo sent Tony to the prestigious boarding school Fettes College in Edinburgh. He spent considerable energy grooming his son who, at 12, stood as a Conservative ‘candidate’ in his school’s mock elections.
Tony named his youngest son Leo after his father in 2000.