As a trustee of the British India Steam Navigation Company ship school scheme I had known Clegg well and he told me he was

As a trustee of the British India Steam Navigation Company ship school scheme I had known Clegg well and he told me he was delighted that Enright should become a member of the European Parliament for Leeds in 1979. My school vied with eight grammar schools and produced results better than any of them - and for many more children. That is why I am proud of the comprehensive system and why I support my colleague Derek Fatchett, MP for Leeds Central, in all his splendid work to make education once more a human thing with human values.In 1974 Enright became a West Yorkshire County Councillor whose rumbustious good sense impressed itself on the discerning Sir Alec Clegg, the distinguished chief education officer of the West Riding. Teaching Classics by definition to gifted children he was inspirational.Partly for social conscience, partly out of a desire to return to his roots and partly out of political ambition and the feeling that South Yorkshire was more likely territory than Surrey for an honourably aspiring politician in 1967, Enright moved to become deputy head of a comprehensive school. He later told the Commons:Featherstone is another area that once relied on coal and it is also where I taught for 12 years as deputy head of a comprehensive school which I helped to establish I am extremely proud of the comprehensive education system.

In the course of my public life several ex-pupils of Enright's have vouchsafed to me, "Do you know Derek Enright? He was my Classics teacher. One hell of a bloke!" They remembered him vividly, and adored that which they remembered. Ultimately, because we pray for him every night, he will change his politics."Within months of doing a DipEd, on account of his obvious quality of mind and no- nonsense discipline Enright became head of department in 1959 at the John Fisher School, at Purley in Surrey. In the same breath as berating the Government for not providing Euro funds he said, "There is also the village of Ackworth, where Geoff Boycott took his first faltering steps at the crease to become the greatest cricketer that the world has ever seen and a great Yorkshireman. Our history and our traditions are in mining and those traditions remain even when people move into other kinds of industry.The reason why Enright was so popular in all parts of the Commons was that his serious points were laced with humour. The mining part of the community that I represent is extremely important, even though only one pit is left.

We have already sown the seeds of what needs to be done to bring about job regeneration in my area. The small extra amount of money for that purpose already approved by the commission would make a tremendous difference. I will conclude all my speeches with a plea for money from Rechar. One reason for that drifting away is that as a result of the Government's failure to obey European Community rules, we are not getting the money that we should under Rechar ["REclaiming CHARbon" - EEC money for coalfield communities ].Cato used to end all his speeches with the words "Delenda est Carthago". We are left with real problems of unemployment and all that goes with that with the drifting away of hospital care so that everything is centred outside the constituency; with the drifting away of real jobs so that people have to move outside. If he could do this he would when he finished have had a training which exercises his mind in three quite different directions; first in ancient literature which would introduce him to a world unlike his own; second in ancient history which was a stiff discipline in the use of evidence and the assessment of historical fact; and third in abstract thinking, both in interpreting the works of philosophers and in forming some kind of philosophy for himself.

Enright benefited to the full from this rich, if exacting, training.Once Enright ended a difference of opinion with me on a matter of Labour Party policy, "Push off, and bury yourself in Bowra's Periclean Athens - then you'll know better!" Not quite the standard rebuke between parliamentary friends and colleagues.In Arthur Scargill's heyday it was not the norm for newly elected Labour MPs from the Yorkshire coalfield to quote the Classics in their maiden speech. However, Enright was undeterred in speaking to the Commons on 13 November 1991:This constituency has been destroyed because of the destruction of its industry, mining; a destruction that was completely unnecessary. He must have enough command of the ancient languages to be able to read them in bulk and to know what the text meant. He did not divorce his professional experience from his politics."It was this love of the Classics which paved the way for a scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford, and the spell of the charismatic Warden of Wadham Sir Maurice Bowra.Bowra took the view that the whole Greats course required a good preparation before anyone could start it. John Gunnell, leader of the West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council and now MP for Leeds South and Morley, whom Enright beat in selection for a European Parliament seat by 49 votes to 48, told me: "Derek was humorous and incisive throughout all the hours we spent on educational legislation together He could make a point picturesquely and memorably.

The importance of the individual inspirational schoolmaster was constantly harped upon by Enright during the many committee stages on educational Bills on which he served in the House of Commons. She had led the first big dispute for better conditions at the old Pontefract liquorice works, which used to produce most of Britain's indigenous liquorice sweeties.All his life a devout Roman Catholic, he was selected to go to St Michael's College, a distinguished grammar school in Leeds, where he told me that a particular elderly teacher had imbued him with love of learning and the Classics. Both in the European Parliament and later at Westminster Enright would lead the roar against any statement which could be interpreted as industrial injustice. The treatment of his dad was an ongoing scar.But he told me that the hereditary genetic basis of the fire in his belly mostly derived from his mother, Helen.