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The bells of Hull Minster rang out as perhaps the city’s most famous adopted son was bid a fond farewell.
Two Jaguars formed part of the funeral cortege bringing John Prescott to the church on Thursday in a nod to the “Two Jags” nickname he earned after it was revealed he used a ministerial one as well as his own. The former deputy prime minister’s coffin was adorned with red roses for Labour and white ones representing Yorkshire.
A crowd gathered outside as people paid respects to the city’s beloved former MP, who died in November aged 86, while inside were 300 of his closest friends, including the current and former prime ministers Keir Starmer, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.
The former Downing Street director of communications Alastair Campbell played the Welsh national anthem on the bagpipes as the coffin was brought in during the service.
Though Prescott was born in Prestatyn and raised near Rotherham, he was beloved in the city that became his home.
Many of the Labour frontbench were also at the service, including the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, and Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester and a former government colleague of Prescott’s.
Mick Lynch, the RMT union leader, said outside the minster that Prescott had been a member of the union.
David Taylor, a former special adviser of Prescott’s during the Blair administration, said: “You always knew where you stood with him. He wasn’t difficult at all. He was very straightforward and down to earth.”
Taylor, who remained friends with Prescott after his time working with him, described him as “a serious guy, with a great sense of humour and a lot of empathy”.
“The good thing about John was that he’d always say: ‘If I’m heading in the wrong direction, say so.’ People thought he would be difficult but he wasn’t.”
Many of the people in the crowd had met him in the 40 years he served as their MP and shared memories, some of them unexpected.
“He was a lovely dancer,” said Pam Tucker, a retired theatre nurse, who had come from Barton-upon-Humber to pay her respects.
She would see him at Westfield Country Club in the nearby village of Cottingham, where he would go dancing with his wife, Pauline, on Saturday nights, she said. “He always looked fabulous,” she said. “He was a cheerful chap and enjoyed a night out.”
It was his devotion to Hull and to working-class people that people outside the minster talked about the most.
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“We both feel great respect for John and the attention he’s brought to Hull,” said Ros Durkin, who had come from Cottingham with her friend Joan Murphy. “He was articulate and there for people.”
Murphy added: “He had a knowledge of ordinary people, when so many people of that profession have never lived a working-class life. It helps enormously to have a sensitivity to people’s needs.”
Bill Waddington, a well-known criminal defence solicitor until his retirement in 2022, had known Prescott in a professional capacity. “One of the things I admired most about him was that he was a fantastic orator, speaking in parliament and at Labour conference,” he said. “For a place like Hull, that was seen as a little bit downmarket … he was good at speaking up for people and doing what was right for them.”
But it was impossible not to mention one of Prescott’s most well-known moments, both inside the service and outside.
“What a guy,” said Robert Blurton, known as Bobster, a retired floor fitter. “When he twatted that guy who threw the egg at him, that was demon.”
Blair joked with the congregation about the “pandemonium” that ensued after “the punch” in the 2001 general election campaign, when he had urged his deputy to apologise.
Blair recalled Prescott saying: “The answer is no, I’m not bloody apologising and that’s the end of it.” He said he watched the footage again recently and was “cheering him on”, adding that his deputy had an “intuition about what Labour must do to sustain itself in power”.
Outside, Bobster, who had known Prescott through the union, said: “He did what it said on the tin. He was a straight-talking guy, he’d lived a life.”
