A moderate Labour politician who came to feel alienated from the extreme Left of his party and eventually joined the Liberal Democrats in the late 1980s, Lord Thomson of Monifieth was, as George Thomson in the House of Commons, the last holder of the office of Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs, 1967-68, in the second administration of Harold Wilson. By then a strong pro-European, he left the Commons in 1972 to become one of the first two British Commissioners of the European Community from 1973-77.

Then, having been made a life peer in 1977, he was from 1981 to 1988, chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority. It was a post in which he played an active role in times that required stout-hearted leadership, as the IBA clashed with the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher over perceived restrictions on its freedom to broadcast controversial programmes, and over the government’s plans to set up an Independent Broadcasting Council to monitor it. The furore over the Thames Television programme Death on the Rock, which he firmly defended, was characteristic.

His career could be said to epitomise how Great Britain, in a single generation, revolutionised its national priorities. As he moved from one eminence to another in his varied life, George Thomson symbolised another important theme of his times — starting life on the political Left and ending, without compromise of principle, in the corridors of capitalist power.

George Morgan Thomson was born at Monifieth, Angus, in 1921. He was educated at Grove Academy, Dundee, and then in that tough school of journalism which produced so many able newspapermen, the Dundee publishing company of D. C. Thomson. Among other tasks, for a period he edited one of Thomson’s most famous publications, the Dandy, a career berth that always rather tickled him in later years.

After war service in the RAF he did not return to Thomson’s, largely because of their notorious anti-trade union policy. In any case, his journalistic talent needed a more serious outlet than a D. C. Thomson comic.

He became assistant editor, under the highly individualistic Emrys Hughes, of the Scottish Labour weekly Forward and succeeded him as editor in 1948 when Hughes was elected an MP.

Borrowing an idea from Robert Blatchford’s weekly newspaper Clarion, which had been founded in 1891, he brought together some of Scotland‘s livelier younger socialists as a “Forward group”: several of them, including Dickson Mabon and Bruce Millan, were to become MPs.

Thomson himself entered Parliament in 1952 in a by-election in Dundee East and became a close friend of Dundee’s other Labour Member, John Strachey. He probably originally saw himself somewhat on the Left of the party.

When nuclear disarmament became an issue, however, he committed himself against the Left on the side of Hugh Gaitskell. Largely because he was so quietly-spoken and self-controlled — he tended to relax only in his own home — colleagues underestimated not only the extent of his ambition but his passionate commitment when he took up a cause.

When Gaitskell died in 1963, Thomson was manager of the campaign to replace him with James Callaghan (who ended up third, after Harold Wilson and George Brown); it was perhaps the fact that Thomson had not backed Brown which led to his relatively easy relationship with Wilson as Prime Minister.

His first post in the Wilson Government in 1964 was as Minister of State at the Foreign Office, where he was held in high regard. He was meticulous, personally agreeable and loyal to his staff.

In 1967 he was promoted to Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs, with responsibility for handling the crisis following Rhodesia’s unilateral declaration of independence. He had to deal with the controversy over the enforcement of sanctions. When it was decided to merge the post with that of Foreign Secretary he became, first, Minister Without Portfolio (when he launched important local government reforms) then moved back to the Foreign Office with the title of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.