Tribute by Dr Eric Shaw, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Stirling To me Geoff was not only a colleague but a friend. I liked him for his good humour, his wit, his warmth and his spontaneity. He was always excellent company. He was also a first-class servant of the party, something that has not been sufficiently recognised. I was aware of this not simply from observation but from the research which I conducted into the Labour party after I became an academic. I should add here that he was personally very helpful towards me, letting me have mounds of NEC papers and I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. I read many of his papers, as Research Director, and admired his clear, incisive and lucid analysis, and his determined efforts to ensure that policy was grounded in solid analysis and full awareness of the party’s values. Perhaps his greatest contribution to the party was in the aftermath of the 1983 when he understood that institutional changes should be put in place to heal the rifts in the party and enable it, in its policy development, to operate more effectively. The policy making apparatus he helped to create, as Head of the Research Department and then as Research Director with its multiple sub committees and working groups brought in many expert sympathisers and established a strong party policy-making capability and it was sad that much of this was dismantled in later years. Geoff played a major role in the history of the party in the 1970s and 1980s, and one that it largely unrecorded and unappreciated. But it was as a person that I best remember him and regret his passing: his bright lively greeting that would cheer anyone up even in the most greyest and most dismal morning. That image of him is still firmly etched in my mind.