Roy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley, PC Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council is a body of advisors to the British Sovereign. Its members are largely senior politicians, who were or are members of either the House of Commons or House of Lords of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, (born 28 December 1932) is a British The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with Labour Party The Labour Party is a centre-left political party and current ruling party in the United Kingdom. Founded at the start of the 20th century, it has been since the 1920s the principal party of the left in England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland, where it has only recently organised again. Under New Labour, the party's position moved politician A political leader is an individual who is involved in influencing public decision making through the influence of politics or a person who influences the way a society is governed. This includes people who hold decision-making positions in government, and people who seek those positions, whether by means of election, coup d'état, appointment,, author and journalist from Wadsley Wadsley is a suburb of the City of Sheffield in South Yorkshire England. It stands five km NW of the city centre at an approximate grid reference of SK321905. Wadsley was formerly a rural village which was engulfed by the expansion of Sheffield in the early part of the 20th century, Sheffield Sheffield (pronounced /ˈʃɛfiːld/ ) is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. It is so named because of its origins in a field on the River Sheaf that runs through the city, England England /ˈɪŋɡlənd/ is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population, while its mainland territory occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain. England is bordered by Scotland to the north, Wales to the west and the North Sea, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea,. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.

Contents

Early life

Roy Hattersley has been a socialist and Labour supporter from his youth, electioneering at the age of 12 for his local MP and city councillors, beginning in 1945. His own mother, Enid Hattersley, was a city councillor, and later, Lord Mayor of Sheffield (in 1981). Enid Hattersley kept the fact secret from her son (until he was in his 50s) that his father, who died an atheist, had been a Roman Catholic priest, Father Frederick Hattersley, and had renounced the Church to marry her.[1]

Education

He won a scholarship to Sheffield City Grammar School and went from there to study at the University of Hull The University of Hull, also known as Hull University, is an English university, founded in 1927, located in Hull , a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The main campus is located on Cottingham Road in the north west of the city while a smaller campus is located in nearby Scarborough. The main campus is also home to the Hull York Medical School,. Having been accepted to read English at Leeds University The University of Leeds is a major teaching and research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire and, with over 33,000 full-time students, one of the largest universities in the United Kingdom. It is a member of the Russell Group and is ranked in the top ten of UK universities for market share of research funding.:10 Dating back to the establishment,[2] he was diverted into reading Economics when told by a Sheffield colleague of his mother that it was necessary for a political career.

At university Hattersley joined the Socialist Society (SocSoc) and was one of those responsible for changing its name to the "Labour Club" and affiliating it with the non-aligned International Union of Socialist Youth rather than the Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , occasionally called the United Soviet Socialist Republic, was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик​ (help·info), tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh-backed International Union of Students. Hattersley became chairman of the new club and later treasurer, and he went on to chair the National Association of Labour Student Organisations Labour Students is an independent student organisation affiliated to the British Labour Party. Membership comprises affiliated college and university clubs . Membership of Labour Students is through membership of a university or college Labour Club. Affiliation is open to any Labour Club generally supportive of the objects of Labour Students. It. He also joined the executive of the IUSY.

Member of Parliament

After graduating Hattersley worked briefly for a Sheffield steelworks and then for two years with the Workers' Educational Association The Workers’ Educational Association seeks to provide access to education and lifelong learning for adults from all backgrounds, and in particular those who have previously missed out on education. The International Federation of Workers Education Associations (IFWEA) has consultative status to UNESCO. Archbishop William Temple was a strong. He also married his wife Molly, who became a headteacher and educational administrator. In 1956 he was elected to the City Council as Labour representative for Crookesmoor and was, very briefly, a JP A Justice of the Peace is a puisne judicial officer appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice and deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions. Justices of the Peace are appointed or elected from the citizens of the jurisdiction in which they. On the Council he spent time as chairman of the Public Works Committee and then the Housing Committee.

His aim became a Westminster The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories. It alone has parliamentary sovereignty, conferring upon it ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and its territories. At its head is the Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II seat, and he was eventually selected for Labour to stand for election in the Sutton Coldfield Sutton Coldfield ( pronunciation ) is a town within the City of Birmingham, in the West Midlands of England. Sutton (as it is often abbreviated to) is located about 8 miles (13 km) from central Birmingham, in the northeast of the city, with a population of 105,452 recorded in the 2001 census. It forms part of the West Midlands conurbation constituency but lost to the Conservative Geoffrey Lloyd in 1959. He kept hunting for prospective candidacies, applying for twenty-five seats over three years. In 1963 he was chosen as the prospective parliamentary candidate for the multi-racial Birmingham Sparkbrook constituency (following a well-known local 'character', Jack Webster) and facing a Tory majority of just under 900. On 16 October 1964 he was elected by 1,254 votes; he was to hold that seat for the next eight general elections.

Journalist

At first he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Margaret Herbison, the Minister for Pensions. His maiden speech was on a housing subsidies bill. Still a Gaitskellite He was born in London, England, and educated at the Dragon School, Winchester College and New College, Oxford, where he gained a first class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1927. His serious interest in politics came about as a result of the General Strike of 1926, and he lectured in economics for the Workers' Educational, he also joined the 1963 Club. He also wrote his first Endpiece column for The Spectator The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by the Barclay brothers, who also own The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject area is politics, about which it generally takes a conservative editorial line, although regular contributors such as Rod Liddle write from a perspective which some[who?] (the column moved to The Listener in 1979 and then to The Guardian The Guardian is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. It is published Monday to Saturday in the Berliner format from its London and Manchester headquarters).

Ministerial positions

Despite the support of Roy Jenkins Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM PC was a British politician. Once prominent as a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) and government minister in the 1960s and 1970s, he became the first (and so far only) British President of the European Commission (1977-81) and one of the four principal founders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Tony Crosland he did not gain a ministerial position until 1967, joining Ray Gunter at the Ministry of Labour. He was reportedly disliked by Prime Minister Harold Wilson James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, PC was one of the most prominent British politicians of the later half of the 20th century. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1970, and again from 1974 to 1976. He emerged as Prime Minister after more general elections than any other 20th century premier. He as a "Jenkinsite". The following year he was promoted to Under Secretary in the same ministry, now led by Barbara Castle, and become closely involved in implementing the unpopular Prices and Incomes Act. In 1969 after the fiasco over In Place of Strife In Place of Strife was a UK Government white paper written in 1969. It was a proposed act to curb the power of trade unions in the United Kingdom, but was never passed into law he was promoted to deputy to Denis Healey Denis Winston Healey, Baron Healey, CH, MBE, PC is a British life peer and Labour politician. He was Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979, the Minister of Defence, following the death of Gerry Reynolds. One of his first jobs, while Healey was hospitalised, was to sign the Army Board Order – putting troops into Northern Ireland Northern Ireland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west. At the time of the 2001 UK Census, its population was 1,685,000, constituting between a quarter and a third of the island's total population and about 3% of the.

European Common Market

The Labour defeat of 1970 ended six years of Labour government. Hattersley was to hold his seat — often increasing his majority — but for the next twenty-six years as MP he was to spend twenty one in Opposition. He was appointed Deputy Foreign Affairs Spokesman, again under Healey, which involved a lot of foreign travel if nothing else. He also took a Visiting Fellowship to the Kennedy School of Government The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is a public policy and public administration school, and one of Harvard's graduate and professional schools. It offers master's degrees in public policy, urban planning, public administration, and international development, grants several doctoral degrees, administers executive at Harvard. During this time he also became an enthusiastic supporter of the Common Market The European Union is an economic and political partnership among 27 member states primarily in Europe that is committed to regional integration. It was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993, upon the foundations of the pre-existing European Economic Community. With a population of almost 500 million, the EU generates an, his "drift to the political centre" put him at odds with much of the Parliamentary Labour Party In UK politics, the Parliamentary Labour Party is the parliamentary party of the Labour Party in Parliament: Labour MPs as a collective body (PLP). He was one of the sixty-nine 'rebels' who voted with the Conservative government for entry into the EEC, which precipitated the resignation of Jenkins as deputy leader (10 April 1972) and eventually a permanent split within Labour. (It was the adoption of a referendum on the EEC as shadow cabinet policy which caused Jenkins to resign.) For 'standing by' the party Hattersley was appointed Defence Spokesman and later Shadow Secretary of State for Education (the one government post he had always coveted).

Privy Council

In the Wilson government of 1974 he was appointed the (non-cabinet) Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and in 1975 he was appointed a Privy Councillor Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council is a body of advisors to the British Sovereign. Its members are largely senior politicians, who were or are members of either the House of Commons or House of Lords of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Hattersley headed the British delegation to Reykjavik during the "Cod War The Cod Wars, also called the Iceland Cod Wars , were a series of confrontations in the 1950s and 1970s between the United Kingdom and Iceland regarding fishing rights in the North Atlantic. The name of the conflict may be derived from a pun on the term "Cold War", possibly via the British tabloid press.[citation needed]", but was primarily given the task of renegotiating the terms of the UK's membership of the EEC. Following the resignation of Wilson he voted for Jim Callaghan in the ensuing leadership contest in order to stop Michael Foot (a man "[who] for all his virtues... could not become Prime Minister"). Under Callaghan he finally made it into the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection, a position he held until Labour's defeat in the 1979 General Election The United Kingdom general election of 1979 was held on 3 May 1979 and is regarded as a pivotal point in 20th century British politics. The Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher defeated James Callaghan's incumbent Labour government in what would prove to be the first of four consecutive general election victories for the Conservative Party.

"Election campaigns all have distinct characteristics. For Labour, 1983 was ludicrous, and 1987 was desperate. At least 1979 was only dismal." In 1979 Hattersley was appointed to shadow Michael Heseltine as the Minister for the Environment, contending with him over the cuts in local government powers and the "right to buy". Following the rise of the 'hard left 'Hard left' is a name often given to an internal tendency within the British Labour Party. Similar terminology is used also in the context of the Australian Labor Party', as demonstrated at the 1980 Labour Conference, Callaghan resigned. The leadership contest was between Healey and Foot, with Hattersley organising Healey's campaign. "An electorate [the PLP] deranged by fear" elected Foot. Healey was made deputy leader and Hattersley was appointed Shadow Home Secretary, but felt that Foot was "a good man in the wrong job", "a baffling combination of the admirable and the absurd". Healey was challenged for his post in 1981, following electoral rule changes, by Tony Benn Anthony "Tony" Neil Wedgwood Benn , formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate, is a British socialist politician and the current President of the Stop the War Coalition, retaining his post by 50.426% to 49.574%. Hattersley felt that "the Bennite alliance [although defeated] ... played a major part in keeping the Conservatives in power for almost twenty years". Hattersley also had very little regard for those Labour defectors who created the SDP in 1981. He helped found Labour Solidarity (1981-83) and credits the group with preventing the disintegration of the Party.

Deputy Leader

Following Labour's devastating defeat in the 1983 general election The 1983 UK general election was held on 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of Labour in 1945 Foot declined to continue as leader. Hattersley stood in the subsequent leadership election, John Smith was his campaign manager and a young Peter Mandelson Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson, PC is a British Labour politician who is the current Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, appointed on 3 October 2008. Mandelson is regarded as one of the main players, along with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, of the modern Labour Party and its rebranding as "New Labour& also impressed Hattersley. The other competitors were Neil Kinnock Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock, PC, is a Welsh politician. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1995, and was Leader of the Opposition and Labour Party leader from 1983 to 1992, when he resigned after being defeated in the 1992 general election. He served as a UK Commissioner of the European Commission from 1995 until 2004, and is, Peter Shore and Eric Heffer. Hattersley had the support of most of the Shadow Cabinet, but the majority of the PLP, the constituency groups and the unions were in favour of Kinnock. In the final count Kinnock secured around three times as many votes as the second-place Hattersley.

As was standard practice at the time Hattersley became deputy leader. The combination was promoted at the time as being a "dream ticket" with Kinnock a representative of the left of the party and Hattersley of the right. Hattersley remained deputy for eight years and also Shadow Chancellor until 1987, when he moved back to Shadow Home Affairs.

Kinnock and Hattersley went to work to rehabilitate Labour after 1983. After the Miners' Strike they purged the Militant tendency The Militant tendency was a Trotskyist entryist group within the British Labour Party between 1964 and 1991 and in 1988 they fought off a leadership challenge by Tony Benn and Eric Heffer. Defeat in 1987 was expected; by 1992 it was clear that the qualities that had brought Kinnock into power were making him unelectable, "the voters would not have him".

Backbenches and Retirement

They both resigned after the defeat in 1992. Hattersley supported his friend John Smith in the leadership contest. In 1993 Hattersley announced he would leave politics at the following general election The UK general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997. The Labour Party won the general election in a landslide victory with 418 seats, the most seats the party has ever held. The Conservatives ended up with 165 seats, the fewest seats they have held since the 1906 General Election, and with no MPs for seats in Scotland or Wales. This marked the. He was made a life peer as Baron Hattersley of Sparkbrook, in the County of West Midlands The West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a population of 2,591,300. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, formed from parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire.

Hattersley was long regarded as being on the right of the party, but with New Labour The Labour Party is a centre-left / centrist political party and current ruling party in the United Kingdom. Founded at the start of the 20th century, it has been since the 1920s the principal party of the left in England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland, where it has only recently organised again. Under New Labour, the party's in power he found himself criticising a Labour government from the left, even claiming that "Blair's Labour Party is not the Labour Party I joined". He has also mentioned repeatedly that he would be supporting Gordon Brown James Gordon Brown MP is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party. Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007, after the resignation of Tony Blair and three days after becoming Leader of the governing Labour Party. Before this, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour government from 1997 to 2007 under as leader. In June 2007, it was alleged that Blair's spin doctor Alastair Campbell Alastair John Campbell served as Director of Communications and Strategy for the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2003. He began working with Tony Blair in 1994 had planned to reveal in the forthcoming publication of his diaries that Blair had once referred to Hattersley as a "Yorkshire Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in Great Britain. Because of its great size, over time functions were increasingly undertaken by its subdivisions, which have been subject to periodic reform. Throughout these changes, Yorkshire continued to be recognised as a geographical territory and cultural region. The name is cunt", the Prime Minister having apparently not appreciated Hattersley's criticism. Blair allegedly demanded that Campbell remove this from his book, along with many other recollections of the Prime Minister using foul language and expressing his extreme dislike of numerous other critics within the Labour Party. [3]

Hattersley is the author of many books including a novel and many biographies. In 1996 he was fined for an incident involving his dog, Buster, after it killed a goose in one of London's royal parks. He later wrote the "diary" of Buster, writing from the dog's perspective on the incident, in which it claimed to have acted in self-defence.[citation needed]

In 2008, Hattersley appeared in a documentary on the DVD for the Doctor Who Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a mysterious alien time-traveller known as "the Doctor" who travels in his space and time-ship, the TARDIS, which normally appears from the exterior to be a blue 1950s police box. With his companions, he explores time serial, Doctor Who and the Silurians, to discuss the political climate that existed at the time of making the serial.

He now writes a regular column, "In Search Of England", for the Daily Mail The Daily Mail is a British newspaper currently published in a tabloid format. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982. An Irish edition of the paper was launched in 2006. The Daily Mail was Britain's about different parts of the United Kingdom; it normally appears in the paper on Tuesdays.

Sport fan

Hattersley is a life-long supporter of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club.

Satire

Hattersley was often attacked by the satirical Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although, in practice, it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about magazine Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three. Magazines can be distributed through the mail; through sales by newsstands, bookstores or other vendors; Private Eye Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical magazine, currently edited by Ian Hislop. Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic of public figures deemed incompetent, inefficient or corrupt, and has become a self-styled "thorn in the side" of the British establishment, though it also receives much for, among other things, his alleged equivocation over the Salman Rushdie Affair Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He first achieved fame with his second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), which won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his early fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical fiction, and a dominant theme of his, in which the author was forced into hiding under threat of murder Murder, as defined in common law countries, is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent , and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide. All jurisdictions, ancient and modern, consider it a most serious crime and therefore impose severe penalty on its commission. The word murder is by Islamic Islam (Arabic: الإسلام‎ al-’islām, pronounced [ʔislæːm] [note 1]) is a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the teachings contained in a religious book, the Qur'an, considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of Allah (the sole divine entity in Islam) as revealed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a 7th century Arab extremists. The magazine alleged that Hattersley was more concerned about retaining the votes of his offended Muslim constituents and appeasing Muslim intolerance than defending freedom of speech Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes used to denote not only freedom of verbal speech but any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are closely.

More famously, he was lampooned by the satirical television programme Spitting Image. He was portrayed as bumbling and ineffectual, and, when it spoke, his latex puppet showered its surroundings with spittle in a wildly exaggerated reference to Hattersley's mild speech impediment (he had trouble pronouncing sibilants) which, however, never masked his highly-articulate delivery. Hattersley found the satirical puppet rather entertaining and saw himself as the show's "eponymous hero".

Hattersley was also mocked by the satirical television programme Have I Got News For You in 1993. After cancelling his booked appearance on the show for the third time, his place was taken by a tub of lard, to which the other participants addressed comments and questions. Hattersley was given an opportunity to appear again in the next series and duly turned up, taking in his stride the continuing jokes about the tub of lard. In 2001, as part of Comic Relief, there was a one-off panel quiz show called "Have I Got Buzzcocks All Over", a combination of HIGNFY, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and They Think It's All Over. One round called "Feel the Politician" had Roy Hattersley appear as the politician, holding a tub of lard.

References

  1. ^ Edna Hattersley's obituary
  2. ^ "Books for pleasure", The Guardian, 12 February 2007. Retrieved on 13 February 2007.
  3. ^ Private Eye magazine, No. 1186, p. 5, 8 June 2007

Partial bibliography

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Roy Hattersley
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Leslie Seymour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Sparkbrook 1964 – 1997 Constituency abolished
Political offices
Preceded by Shirley Williams Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection 1976 – 1979 Office abolished
Preceded by Merlyn Rees Shadow Home Secretary 1980 – 1983 Succeeded by Gerald Kaufman
Preceded by Peter Shore Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer 1983 – 1987 Succeeded by John Smith
Preceded by Gerald Kaufman Shadow Home Secretary 1987 – 1992 Succeeded by Tony Blair
Party political offices
Preceded by Denis Healey Deputy Leader of the Labour Party 1983 – 1992 Succeeded by Margaret Beckett
Persondata
NAME Hattersley, Roy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION British Labour Party politician, published author and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH 28 December 1932 ) (age 76)
PLACE OF BIRTH Sheffield, England, UK
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

Categories: 1932 births | Living people | Alumni of The City School (Sheffield) | Alumni of the University of Hull | British humanists | British journalists | British Secretaries of State | Councillors in Yorkshire and the Humber | Daily Mail journalists | Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature | Guardian journalists | Labour MPs (UK) | Labour Party life peers | Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom | Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies | People from Sheffield | UK MPs 1964-1966 | UK MPs 1966-1970 | UK MPs 1970-1974 | UK MPs 1974 | UK MPs 1974-1979 | UK MPs 1979-1983 | UK MPs 1983-1987 | UK MPs 1987-1992 | UK MPs 1992-1997

 

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