I come from a generation of students who saw Harold Wilson as a brilliant challenge to a long period of Conservative rule in Britain.

As a challenger to the age of the aristocratic world of Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home he was, in my eyes, the radical, innovative vision of Britain I had been waiting for.

Harold Wilson was not the greatest orator in the world, but his quick wit and brilliant way of handling Prime Ministers Questions and those who dared to needle him were legendary. His vision of a modern, innovative role for Britain in Europe in a post-war world was compelling.

His 1963 speech, ‘White Heat of Technology’, delivered to the 1963 Scarborough Labour Conference was one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century, pointing as it did to a future new deal for our country where all talent and potential would be recognised and deployed in the national interest, wherever it came from.

My first meeting with Harold occurred during the 1979 General Election Campaign when he came to spend the day with us in Huddersfield. He was immensely kind and patient with the young candidate and we had a strenuous day meeting voters at the open market and visiting Huddersfield Royal Infirmary which he had opened in 1965.

I particularly recall his thoughtful speech on the prospects for the British economy in the school hall in Paddock, so close to his birth place. It was a gruelling pace that day and his health was deteriorating by this stage, but he obviously enjoyed it immensely.

Harold Wilson British Prime Minister - Jul 1967 waves to crowds from the Hotel balcony at Durham. ©Mirrorpix

Harold remained a colleague in the House of Commons before being elevated to the Lords in 1983. On one occasion he responded with alacrity when two leading local businessmen, Joe and John Marsden, asked if he would open the new Huddersfield Hotel. This was in 1984 and the newly ennobled Lord Wilson of Rievaulx arrived in Huddersfield to the sound of the Paddock youth band playing ‘On Ilkley Moor Baht ‘at.’

The crowds for that visit was phenomenal and the town used the occasion to welcome home a much loved local son. Although never a Yorkshire Member of Parliament, Harold’s heart remained firmly in Yorkshire and Huddersfield. His passion for Huddersfield Town FC never dimmed as he always carried a photo of the 1924-25 title winning team in his wallet.

Today we have much to thank Harold for in the lasting impact he had on the modernisation of our country, but we in Huddersfield should be particularly grateful that as Prime Minister, when he was presented with the list of colleges to be made up to polytechnics by Richard Crosland, he remarked “where’s Huddersfield?” and wrote it in.

Thank you Harold, for everything.