His father, at various times a police officer, clerk at Sheffield town hall, and chairman of the council's Health Committee,[5][6] was a former Roman Catholic priest,[4] the parish priest at St Joseph's at Shirebrook in Derbyshire,[7] who renounced the church and left the priesthood to cohabit with Hattersley's mother, Enid, a married woman at whose wedding he had officiated two weeks earlier; Frederick ultimately died an atheist.

His aim became a Westminster seat, and he was eventually selected for Labour to stand for election in the Sutton Coldfield constituency but lost to the Conservative Geoffrey Lloyd in 1959.

In 1963 he was chosen as the prospective parliamentary candidate for the multi-racial Birmingham Sparkbrook constituency (following a well-known local 'character', Jack Webster) and facing a Conservative majority of just under 900.

[citation needed] Despite the support of Roy Jenkins and Tony Crosland he did not gain a ministerial position until 1967, joining Ray Gunter at the Ministry of Labour.

The following year he was promoted to Under Secretary in the same ministry, now led by Barbara Castle, and become closely involved in implementing the unpopular Prices and Incomes Act 1966.

During this time he also became an enthusiastic supporter of the Common Market, and his "drift to the political centre" put him at odds with much of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).

Hattersley was one of the sixty-nine "rebels" who voted with the Conservative government in favour of entry into the EEC, which precipitated the resignation of Roy Jenkins as deputy leader (10 April 1972) and eventually a permanent split within Labour.

In the Wilson government of 1974, Hattersley was appointed the (non-cabinet) Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and in the 1975 New Year Honours, he was sworn of the Privy Council.

[11] Hattersley headed the British delegation to Reykjavik during the "Cod Wars", but was primarily given the task of renegotiating the terms of the UK's membership of the EEC.

Following the resignation of Wilson he voted for James Callaghan in the ensuing leadership contest to stop Michael Foot (a man "[who] for all his virtues ... could not become Prime Minister").

Under Callaghan he finally made it into the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection, a position he held until Labour's defeat in the 1979 general election.

In 1979 Hattersley was appointed to shadow Michael Heseltine as the Minister for the Environment, contending with him over the cuts in local government powers and the "Right to Buy".

Healey was made deputy leader and Hattersley was appointed Shadow Home Secretary, but felt that Foot was "a good man in the wrong job", "a baffling combination of the admirable and the absurd".

Hattersley felt that "the Bennite alliance [although defeated] ... played a major part in keeping the Conservatives in power for almost twenty years".

Following the miners' strike of 1984–1985 they resumed expulsions of members of the entryist Militant group whose activities, organisation and politics had earlier been found to contravene the Labour Party's constitution.

Labour had regularly topped opinion polls since 1989 and at one stage had a lead of up to 15 points over the Conservatives, though this was cut back and more than once overhauled by the Tories following the resignation of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister to make way for John Major in November 1990.

In the run-up to the 1992 election, Hattersley was present at the Labour Party rally in his native Sheffield and backed up Kinnock with the claim that "with every day that passes, Neil looks more and more like the real tenant of number 10 Downing Street".