David Alton looks back, three decades after becoming Edge Hill MP in a gripping by-election. Peter Elson reports

IT IS not often that David Alton has been stumped for an answer in his political career, but one young socialist revolutionary stopped him in his tracks.

“You're the last remaining element of the ruling class on Merseyside,” the Marxist whippersnapper smugly decreed.

“That was while campaigning in 1987 and I asked this young man where he got his information from,” recalls David.

“Naturally, he despised the Post, Echo and BBC, but I nearly choked when he said he got his news from Radio Albania, a country ruled by the appalling dictator Enver Hoxha.”

And this confrontation took place long before the Rt Hon Member of Parliament for Edge Hill (and Mossley Hill from 1983) became Professor the Lord Alton of Liverpool.

His background is hardly silver-spoon territory. A devout Roman Catholic born into an ordinary English-Irish family in Hornchurch, Essex, his father was a car factory worker.

While at his Jesuit school taking A-Level history, his interest in politics led him to become chairman of his local Liberal Association, aged 17.

He arrived in Liverpool to study at Christ's College of Education, Woolton, and later taught special needs for five years with a spell in Kirkby.

But he'll forever be remembered as the man who was Britain's youngest city councillor when elected as a Liberal on Liverpool City Council.

He was then elected, aged 28, as Liberal MP for Liverpool Edge Hill at a by-election in 1979 and was “Baby of the House”.

Four weeks later, he had to fight for the seat again when a general election was called, which he won equally conclusively.