TONY Blair strayed from his education script to explain how, as a new MP, a meeting with an old Labour leader shaped his view of the future.

"One of the most important meetings I ever attended in my life, although at the time it didn't seem like that, was in County Hall, Durham, where I worked on a holiday job once in the vehicle licensing department," said Mr Blair.

"When I went back to County Hall as an MP, the council leader was Micky Terrans, who had been a union branch official in the 1926 General Strike.

"By then in his seventies, he could see the world around us changing, and the purpose of the meeting was for him to make a key speech, which he did in a simple and blunt way.

"He said there's no point worrying about the demise of the coal industry. It is happening and it will be completed, and no one should be under any illusions that this process is going to stop. So we in the North-East have to decide on a different economic future and go out there and get it.

"Because it came from him, with his background and his length of service, those that might have attacked him for a betrayal of everything he was supposed to stand for were taken aback.

"After that meeting, I reflected that if a man with his background, his tradition, was prepared to make changes we, in the Labour Party and outside of it, should be prepared to make changes - and that's the purpose of what we are trying to do with public sector reforms."

Mr Blair was first elected Sedgefield's MP in 1983. Mr Terrans was Durham County Council leader from 1981 to 1989.