On Saturday the Labour History Society is holding a one-day school and part of it will focus on the 1964 to 1970 Labour government.

The moving force behind this is Stan Newens, former MP for Harlow and MEP for London Central. Stan’s political and personal memoirs are a chronicle of modern British politics since the end of the second world war and the various left movements in society and the Labour Party.

His book starts with growing up in east London and then chronicles the family’s move to Harlow and his political awakening.

Despite family opposition, Stan became a socialist after the 1945 election, was ridiculed by people in his Tory-voting village and became more interested in socialist ideas and the political process.

While at school doing his A-levels, he was given a ticket to visit the House of Commons and witness one of the seminal debates of the time.

Opened by Attlee’s hawkish foreign secretary Ernie Bevin, young Stan heard the cold warriors from the Labour government and the Tories in full flight.

Several hours into the debate, the great left peace campaigner Konni Zilliacus was called to speak and the house heard a very different analysis of the role of the US in post-war Europe.

Essentially this was the key debate on Britain’s overall strategy. Inviting US forces into Britain and establishing Nato set the scene for decades of cold war.

Stan later goes on to describe his opposition to Nato, criticisms of the Soviet Union and passionate opposition to nuclear weapons. One of a handful of pupils who managed to get from his state school to university, Stan studied history and later went on to become a teacher.

Fifties Britain had conscription and soldiers were needed for the Korean war. This war cost the Labour government dear when it raised prescription charges and forced Aneurin Bevan, Harold Wilson and John Freeman to resign rather than see the NHS, Labour’s greatest achievement, damaged to pay for the war.

Stan did not want to serve in the army and found the only job open to conscientious objectors was mining. He therefore enlisted with the National Coal Board and was sent to Staffordshire where he worked down the pit. Overcoming huge challenges he became a good miner and a good union representative.

Stan returned to Harlow, a place which is his home and was embroiled in Labour politics as well as union, co-operative and socialist discussion groups.

Personal tragedy came with the death of his first wife Anne and with small children to care for he was still elected to Parliament in 1964.

He married Sandra and their wonderful partnership continues.

Stan was one of the MPs who supported socialist ideas, and challenged Wilson repeatedly during the first Labour government on international as well as national issues.

While the government did not get involved militarily in Vietnam, its political support was undeniable and cost the party dear. Compared to Blair’s support for Bush it seems quite modest but at the time when the world condemned the war, napalm, Agent Orange and the endless bombing of the north it was incomprehensible that the Labour government could not see it.

Always active on international issues, Stan became chair of Liberation (founded as the Movement for Colonial Freedom) and his book chronicles the anti-racist marches and rallies following Enoch Powell’s notorious “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968.

Stan was defeated by Norman Tebbit, who ran a vicious personal attack on him for his opposition to Israel in the six-day war of 1967. Stan returned to teaching.

Elected again in 1974, Stan was a huge voice on international issues including Iraq and Iran where he supported human rights groups and opponents of the Shah. Liberation had close links with the Tudeh Party and Stan warned them that any alliance with Khomeini was a great danger. A short time after the 1979 revolution many Tudeh Party members were executed.

Stan took a delegation of Labour MPs to the Middle East in late 1974 and went to refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon and, crucially, had a long meeting with Yasser Arafat.

Stan represents an age when international solidarity was crucial to the very lifeblood of the labour movement.

Stan was in Hanoi at the end of the Vietnam war. He was also active in solidarity with the left in Indonesia and supported East Timor against the invasion by Indonesia.

Stan survived the 1979 Thatcher election victory but sadly lost in 1983. He was elected to the European Parliament and was a huge voice there for international solidarity and used his position to support the miners during the 1984-5 strike.

The book shows an enormous level of energy and ability to work effectively on a very wide range of causes. This book and his socialist history work show Stan at his best, an inspired teacher.

David Cameron has decided that one of the themes of the Tory election campaign will be ridding the British people of the “shackles” of human rights law.

The Tory-dominated media have always had a problem with the 1998 Human Rights Act because it gives everyone specific rights and enshrines the 1948 European convention into British law for the first time.

It has made a difference to a lot of people and changed much of the atmosphere  surrounding rights and justice.

Because it has been used to try and prevent people being deported to a place where they could be tortured or enabled asylum-seekers to quite justifiably claim family life, the right-wing media hates it. It also requires our armed forces to accept human rights conditions on what they do.

Essentially what Cameron and Justice Secretary Chris Grayling want is the ability to pick and choose which rulings to accept and which to reject. It is a ludicrous prospect and applied anywhere else would be condemned by Britain’s Tories.

If allowed to get away with it we will soon be told that the International Labour Organisation is another “interference” and climate change protocols “interfere” with free-market economics.

There cannot be anything but total opposition to this.

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North