Labour’s Ossie O’Brien won a by-election and became Darlington MP for just eleven weeks and one day – the fifth shortest term of office in Parliamentary history.
O’Brien’s father had been disabled during the First World War and his mother was a Peases’ mill girl. When 14, he reputedly lied about his age to join the Royal Navy. He later attended college in Birmingham and then Durham University.
His first bid to be selected as Labour’s Darlington candidate in 1965 failed by one vote. The winner, Edward ‘Ted’ Fletcher, went on to hold the seat until his death in 1983. In the subsequent by-election, O’Brien beat Michael Fallon, a 30-year-old Scottish Conservative, by 2,412 votes. But just seventy-seven days later, with Margaret Thatcher riding high after the Falklands victory, O’Brien fought the General Election on a Labour manifesto described as ‘the longest suicide note in history’. He lost to Fallon by 3,438 votes.
When O’Brien’s wait to be sworn in and the four-week election campaign are discounted, his parliamentary career lasted just forty-five days.
After his death in 1997, renowned left-wing Labour MP Tam Dalyell wrote: ‘But for the verdict of the electorate and the ill luck 18 years earlier of such a close selection conference result, he would undoubtedly have made a serious contribution to Parliament in the field of education and training.’
(The Independent, 1997)