John Maxton, Lord Maxton, belonged to a generation of able Labour MPs who sustained the party through 18 hard years of opposition before its electoral success in 1997.

He retired from the Commons at the following general election and became a respected working peer, serving on the science and technology committee, which reflected longstanding interests and expertise.

His friend George Foulkes, with whom he shared a Westminster office for many years, is “pretty sure he was the first MP with a mobile phone”. Maxton maintained an enthusiasm for new technologies, alongside a conviction that the Palace of Westminster should be turned into a museum and replaced with a modern parliamentary home. He advocated electronic voting and supported ID cards as a means to that end.

When Maxton, who has died aged 89, was first elected in the Glasgow Cathcart constituency, it was Labour’s only gain from the Tories in the 1979 general election. He ousted Teddy Taylor, a populist rightwinger who was set to become secretary of state for Scotland in Margaret Thatcher’s first cabinet.

The Tories had held the seat for 62 years and Taylor had been its MP since 1964, somewhat against the odds, as its demography had changed to include the large Castlemilk housing estate. A collapse of the SNP vote in 1979 helped make it a clear choice between Maxton and Taylor.

Maxton, regarded as an excellent constituency MP, was assisted by the irony of Cathcart Labour party being exceptionally well funded through its social club. As a hangover from days of “veto polls” (by which residents could decide whether alcohol should be prohibited in their area), Cathcart was a “dry” area, a status avidly defended by the teetotal Taylor. Social clubs were exempt from the legislation and Cathcart Labour club filled the void.

Maxton’s name recognition did no harm either. He was the nephew of James Maxton, one of the most celebrated Red Clydesiders of the interwar years, a leading light of the Independent Labour party, and an MP from 1922 until his death in 1946. Restoring a Maxton to the Commons had its own appeal for a Glasgow electorate.

In 1983, John successfully defended Cathcart despite boundary changes that had made it a nominal Tory “hold” and he enjoyed the satisfaction of saying that he gained it from the Tories, not once but twice. In parliament, he became a member of the Tribune group and an eloquent and measured speaker, without his uncle’s fiery oratory.

In other parliamentary eras, Maxton would have become an effective Labour minister. As it was, he served from 1982 to 1992 as a frontbench spokesman on Scottish affairs, under Bruce Millan and Donald Dewar, with particular expertise on education and local government.

He was in the frontline of opposing the poll tax’s introduction to Scotland in 1989 while fending off demands from the ultra-left and SNP for a non-payment campaign. Maxton argued that the tax was “a crazy, unworkable system that would inevitably collapse under the weight of its own absurdities” and so it proved. The threat of the ballot box killed the poll tax and took Thatcher with it.

In an exchange with Alex Salmond, the Scottish Nationalist leader, Maxton derided well-heeled non-payers who, when the poll tax was dropped, “took out their cheque books, paid their debts and left many of their supporters in dire straits, seemingly without the slightest pang of remorse for the problems they had caused these poor people”.

Very much in the Maxton tradition, John was a long-term supporter of Scottish “home rule” or, as it became known, devolution. His preference would probably have been to serve in a Scottish parliament if that option had arisen sooner. In the Commons, he became a well-regarded chair of committees, after relinquishing his frontbench role.

He was also a member of the heritage select committee and made a celebrated defence of the National Heritage Memorial Fund’s decision in 1995 to spend £13m from the newly established National Lottery on acquiring the Churchill papers.

When the fund chairman, Lord Rothschild, was under fire before the committee, Maxton told him: “You were right to spend that money on acquiring the Churchill papers, but you never should have had to. It was a disgrace that any member of the family should have demanded money for the papers.”

Maxton was born in Oxford, the son of John – the younger brother of James – and Jenny (nee Alston). His father was a conscientious objector in the first world war who was detained in Wormwood Scrubs and later became professor of agricultural economics at Oxford University. His mother, a teacher, was from another prominent ILP family.

John was educated at Lord Williams’s grammar school in Thame and University College, Oxford, where he gained a teaching qualification after graduating. At that point, he returned to Scottish roots, initially as a teacher at Glasgow academy and then as a lecturer at Hamilton Teacher Training College.

He became chair of the Scottish college lecturers’ association and adopted an anti-Common Market position in the 1975 referendum. This increased prominence made him an ideal Labour candidate at a time when the party’s fortunes were under stress. Over 18 years of opposition, its position in Scotland was maintained due in no small measure to the respect in which Maxton’s generation of Labour politicians was held.

Maxton was a dedicated runner and rugby enthusiast, while his other great interest outside family and politics was jazz. He was for a time a director of the Glasgow jazz festival.

He is survived by his wife Christine (nee Waine), also a teacher, whom he married in 1970, three sons and three grandchildren.

• John Maxton, educator and politician, born 5 May 1936; died 20 November 2025