A tale of 2 Healeys

How very different men bore Labour's 'poisoned chalice' in defence 60 yrs apart

- BY PAUL ROUTLEDGE

THIS is a tale of political twins: Denis and John Healey, who both became Labour's Defence Secretary, though 60 years apart.

They share a bond in being strong-minded sons of Yorkshire, but there the resemblance ends.

Major Denis, a grammar school boy from the working-class mill town of Keighley who went to Oxford University, was a towering figure of the Sixties and Seventies.

He had a distinguished Second World War record, fighting with the Royal Artillery in the Western Desert, Sicily and the Italian Campaign, where he was twice mentioned in dispatches for his part in the battle of Anzio.

He represented a Leeds constituency for 40 years from 1945.

John, 65, was born in the county town of Wakefield, and educated at a private prep school in Pickering and feepaying St Peter's School, York.

NUCLEAR

He graduated from Cambridge before becoming a journalist and trade union official, rising to be head of media with the Trades Union Congress. He was elected MP for a South Yorkshire mining constituency in 1997, for which he still sits.