My friend Eric Preston, who has died aged 88, was a leading figure in what for many years was known as the Independent Labour party but which since its return to the Labour party in 1974 has been known as Independent Labour Publications. Eric was born in Ossett in Yorkshire to Frank Preston, a miner, and his wife, Dorothy (nee Smith). He left Dewsbury Wheelwright grammar school in 1946, at 14, to embark on various clerical jobs. Initially his views were distinctly rightwing, but as a young man he found them challenged on a cycling holiday with his friends Dennis and Doreen Towler. Briefly he then joined the Communist party, but left its ranks in 1956 after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and joined the ILP the following year. He also began to immerse himself in various anti-war groups, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Committee of 100 and Spies for Peace. In 1965 Eric left work to become a mature student at Leeds University, where he studied politics and sociology. Later he taught classes in political economy, economics and sociology to workers on courses run by the Trades Union Congress at Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Beckett University). He remained there until his retirement in 1984. In 1971 he wrote, with Danny Kennally, a pamphlet entitled Belfast 1971, A Case to be Answered, which looked at the role of the British army in policing nationalist areas of Belfast. It was the first of many ILP publications that he produced, but perhaps Eric’s major contribution to the party was persuading it to rejoin the Labour party, which it did in 1974 after a prolonged debate, ending 42 years of isolation on the left of British politics. Over the next three decades he wrote a number of articles for the organisation’s newspaper Labour Leader, as well as for the ILP Magazine. He also helped to shape ILP campaigns on local government, youth training, the poll tax, Northern Ireland and reform of the Labour party. Perhaps his key polemical work was Labour in Crisis (1982), in which he identified deep-rooted working-class conservatism as an issue that the left needed to address. The argument about how to do that continues to this day. He was also one of the earliest leftwing voices to warn about capitalism’s impact on the environment. Eric had strong, independent views and an unorthodox Marxian approach to politics, but he always operated in a spirit of intellectual inquiry and comradeship. He was kind, charming, always welcoming and endlessly hospitable, to friend and foe alike. He is survived by his wife, Joan (nee Bradley), whom he married in 1954, their children, Robert and Karen, and grandson, Alfie.