Leo Blair

Leo Blair – after whom Tony Blair’s youngest child was named – was proud of his son’s achievements. Though still a Tory, he led the applause at Tony Blair’s election as Labour leader. He joined the Labour Party soon after, blaming his conversion on the Conservatives’ privatisation of the railways. He was beside his son for the declaration at Sedgefield on the night of Labour’s landslide victory in May 1997, then proudly sat down to compose a letter of congratulation.

The reply surprised him. The letter had reached the Correspondence Unit at 10 Downing Street; the shaky signature “Your beloved Pa” had been misinterpreted and the reply was addressed: “Dear Mr Pa”. It thanked Mr Blair for sending in his idea, regretted it was not something Number 10 could take up but suggested he might care to contact his MP or Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

When Daniel Kawczynski, Conservative candidate for Shrewsbury, canvassed Leo Blair at his Shropshire home in 2005, he realised he would not win him over and instead asked if he had any advice. “Aye,” replied Mr Blair, who never lost his Scottish accent . “Vote Labour”. Reminded that he had once been a Tory, Mr Blair replied: “Times change. That’s life.”

Charles Leonard Augustus Parsons was born at Filey, Yorkshire, on August 4 1923. His unmarried parents, Charles Parsons (a Pierrot known as Jimmy Lynton) and Celia Ridgway Bridson, a dancer, had almost appeared on the same bill as John Major’s father Tom, also a music hall artist. They gave him up for fostering at three months to William Blair, a Govan shipyard rigger, and his staunchly socialist wife Mary, a childless couple they had met on tour in Glasgow who were managing on 18 shillings a week.

When Leo was 12 his biological parents, who had kept in touch and were then married with two daughters, tried to take him back. Celia Ridgway came up to Glasgow and Leo and his stepmother had lunch with her; Mary Blair threatened to kill herself or barricade herself in her house if they took him – and Leo did not want to leave her.

Leo grew up a product of Red Clydeside (and a Protestant, though his biological parents were Roman Catholics). He left school at 14 and joined the Young Communist League, becoming its Scottish secretary. He was a copy boy at the Daily Worker until it was shut down by the wartime Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, Peter Mandelson’s grandfather. He then worked as a clerk in Glasgow Corporation’s Public Assistance Department.

In 1942, aged 18, he joined the Royal Signals as a private; he had a good war, about which he seldom spoke, and was demobilised in 1947 an acting major. Meanwhile, Mary Blair wrote to tell the Parsons – whose name he still bore – that he had been killed in action. Unaware of this, Leo Parsons changed his name to Leo Charles Lynton Blair on his return. In 1994, after newspaper publicity, he was reunited with his half-sisters.

He settled in Edinburgh, where he married and his children were born, taking a doctorate in Law at the university. He lectured for three years at Adelaide University, and on his return lived briefly at Stepps, Lanarkshire, before taking up a lectureship at Durham University – combining this with practice at the Bar, for which he had also found time to qualify.

In his son’s words a “classic working-class Conservative” in the Norman Tebbit mould, Leo Blair rose to chair Durham Conservative Association. Leading Tories would stay at his home, and he had hopes of becoming the city’s parliamentary candidate when he suffered his first stroke at 40.

Tony Blair was then 11. He has recalled: “One morning I woke to be told he had had a stroke in the middle of the night and might not live through the day, and my whole world fell apart. It taught me the value of the family, because my mother worked for three years to help him talk and walk again.” During that time, he recalled, many “fair weather friends” deserted the family.

Leo Blair fought back to resume his legal career while his younger son proved a handful at Fettes. Tony Blair hated the school, but his father told him he had to knuckle under. Once Tony gave Blair senior the slip at Newcastle station and tried to stow away on a plane at the airport – not to the Bahamas, as he later claimed – but was made to go back.

Leo Blair gave visiting lectures at Sierra Leone University before being appointed to chair industrial tribunals, eventually in Shrewsbury. One of his most notable decisions – over the rights of bus drivers in Wrexham sacked in 1991 after a strike – was challenged by the Crosville company but upheld by the House of Lords.

In 1948 Leo Blair married Hazel Corscadden, from an Ulster Protestant family and stepdaughter of a Glasgow butcher. She died of throat cancer in 1975, leaving two sons: the future Prime Minister, his elder brother William Blair, QC, and a daughter, Sarah. His second wife, Olwyn, died in March.

Leo Blair, born August 4 1923, died November 16 2012