Media commentators gave him little chance as a Fabian Society member in a union executive dominated by communists, but he came within 3,000 votes of victory.
However, along with seven other PPS's, he was sacked by Prime Minister Harold Wilson four months later for refusing to back Britain's application for Common Market membership.
Considered in 1983 as a replacement for Derek Ezra as chairman of the National Coal Board, the position was given to Sir Ian MacGregor, whom Eadie later blamed for the conflict that led to the miners' strike of 1984–85.
[3][4] In the early 1970s, Eadie put forward a Private Members Bill that would have established the principle that no child in Scotland should be treated as incapable of being educated.
After he became a junior minister in February 1974, he handed over the brief to Hamish Gray, then Conservative MP for Ross and Cromarty, with whom he became firm friends.
Legislation later passed, steered and supported by Eadie and Gray, which put Scotland at the forefront of special needs education provision within the UK.