Red Rose Blues: The Story of a Good Labour Man - Hardcover

Joe Ashton started work in a Sheffield steel factory at the age of 15. There, alongside thousands of others, he learnt to hate the bosses, the ruling classes and those who made their lives so hard and the world such a mess. This lit an old Labour fire in Joe Ashton's belly, one that would steer him into Parliament and keep him there for over 30 years. Still MP for coal-mining Bassetlaw, Joe Ashton remembers the hair-raising attempts to cling onto power in the 1970s when for four cliff-hanging years a minority government was kept in power by carrying the almost-dead in to vote and wheeling the dealing the pairs system. This irreverent memoir full of funny and outrageous stories is also angry and heartfelt. Joe Ashton tells for the first time his side of the nightmare and scandal which engulfed him in 1999 when his name was leaked to the tabloids, following a police raid on a massage parlour where he was the only customer.