T. Dan Smith

Thomas Daniel Smith (1915-1993), known as T. Dan Smith, was probably the most significant English regional political figure of the later twentieth century, but his conviction and gaoling for corruption did much to undermine the cause of English regionalism.

Smith was born in the Tyneside industrial town of Wallsend, east of Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of a coal miner. He left school early and was apprenticed as a painter in a local shipyard. As a young adult, he increasingly made a name for himself as a political agitator. He was a Trotskyist and member of the Independent Labour Party, and campaigned against British participation in the Second World War (he was exempted from service through deafness); at the same time, he ran his own painting and decorating company.

Smith was expelled from the ILP in 1945 and subsequently joined the Labour Party, and became a councillor for the working class Walker ward of Newcastle in 1950. When Labour gained control of Newcastle in 1958 he became deputy leader, and, in 1960, leader of the council. Between then and his resignation from the council in 1965, he brought about massive changes to the structure of the city and the organisation of its council, for which he has been described as 'the first American-style city boss in Britain'. In association with his protege, the planner Wilfred Burns, a major plan was drawn up and partially implemented to rebuild the Victorian centre of Newcastle as a twentieth century 'regional capital'; in the media it was likened to a 'new Brasilia'.