Eddie Milne succeeded Alfred Robens as MP for Blyth, later known as Blyth Valley, in 1960. Robens was unexpectedly and somewhat controversially elevated to the chairmanship of the National Coal Board, and Milne, a trades union official, was selected by the local labour party and with the support of the shopworkers union, USDAW. Alfred (Alf) Robens (1910-1999) was a United Kingdom Labour MP and, later, chaired the National Coal Board. ... Blyth is the name of more than one place. ... Blyth Valley is a borough and district in south-east Northumberland, England, bordering the North Sea and Tyne and Wear. ... The name Labour Party or Labor Party is used by several political parties around the world. ... The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) is a trade union in the United Kingdom. ...

Undistinguished in his Parliamentary career, Milne became increasingly concerned about problems of corruption within local government in the north east of England involving leading Labour movement figures like Andy Cunningham and T Dan Smith. It was perhaps unfortunate for Milne that his interest in these matters emerged at the same time as he was increasingly perceived by some members of the local party as distant and remote. Bodger(Cunningham) and Badger Andy Cunningham wrote and played Bodger in Bodger and Badger. ... Thomas Daniel Smith (May 11, 1915 - July 27, 1993) was a British politician who was Leader of Newcastle upon Tyne City Council from 1960 to 1965 and a prominent figure in the Labour Party in the north-east of England, such that he was nicknamed Mr. ...

By 1974 the breach between Milne and the local party was irreparable, and he was deselected. Undaunted, he ran a campaign as an independent candidate at the February 1974 General Election and overturned the Labour majority. It was a short lived victory; Milne was unseated in October 1974 by John Ryman, whose own career ended in ingominy, and his supporters who won seats on the local authority had vanished by 1979.

As a sad postscript to Milne's career, his book on the subject of his travails with the local party, and giving his view on the corruption scandals of the 1970s, attracted 36 libel writs,and the costs and damages associated with it came close to [1]bankrupting his publishers.