UNTIL THE beginning of 1984, Chesterfield's main claim to fame was a dramatically crooked church spire. Then, on 15 January, a delegate meeting of Chesterfield Labour Party chose Tony Benn to fight the forthcoming by-election. The media hit the town. By the time the official campaign started there were 25 film crews stationed in the town. press spent over f1 million covering the month-long event.
Towards the end of the by-election, Chesterfield Labour Party member and erovshire leader, Heathfield, was elected general secretary of the miners' union. Less than a week after the by-election victory, union had begun its historic year-long During that year Chesterfield has come ave politically. Everyone's agreed, the town will never be the same again.
For the previous 19 years, Labour's representative was Eric Varley. In a parliamentary career remarkably similar to Benn's, he spent 16 of those years on Labour's front bench. But government jobs - in technology, energy and industry — are where the likeness starts and ends.
Varley, an ex-branch secretary Markham colliery and an sponsored MP, was a confirmed right winger whom many feared would defeat to the SDP. After a year of rumours that he would be offered the chair of the National Coal Board, Varley announced intention resign as November 183.
IONAL UNION OF NERS MARCH ON RALLY He became deputy chairperson of Coalite, a fuel and chemical giant which produces, among orner inings, 140 1 — the same chemical responsible for the Seveso disaster in Italy, when poisonous Dioxin gas was released into the atmosphere with devastating and fatal effect. The