Brian Sedgemore

Brian Charles Sedgemore (born March 17, 1937 - May 5, 2015 ) was a British politician who initially represented the constituency of Luton West in the House of Commons for the Labor Party between 1974 and 1979 and was also a member of Parliament during this time from 1977 to 1978 Private Secretary to then Energy Secretary Tony Benn was. Sedgemore, who represented the constituency of Hackney South and Shoreditch in the House of Commons from 1983 to 2005 , joined the Liberal Democrats as a member of the Liberal Democrats after 24 years as the Labor Party backbencher .

Life

Degree, lawyer and columnist

Sedgemore was the son of a fisherman from Devon who died as a stoker on board the passenger ship Rawalpindi at the beginning of the Second World War , when it was sunk on November 23, 1939 by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau southeast of Iceland . After attending Hele's School , a grammar school in Exeter , founded in 1850 , and completing military service (National Service) in the Royal Air Force , he began studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at the University of Oxford in 1958 , where he then completed a postgraduate course in administrative science . In the 1960s he was an active player on the Stockwood Park XV rugby team .

After completing his studies, Sedgemore became an employee of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and in 1964 became private secretary of the Parliamentary State Secretary there, Robert Mellish . At the same time, he completed a law degree , which he completed in 1966 with admission to the bar ( Inns of Court ) of Middle Temple . He then took up a job as a barrister and focused on civil rights . He also wrote a column for the satirical magazine Private Eye under the pseudonym Justinian Forthemoney .

Member of the House of Commons

Luton West constituency 1974 to 1979

When the 1973 Yom Kippur War caused an oil price crisis that led to a reduction in fuel consumption, Sedgemore ignored Prime Minister Edward Heath's appeals to voluntarily comply with a speed limit of 50 mph and protested against what he saw pointless gasoline rationing with a race on the M1 Motorway .

Sedgemore began his political career for the Labor Party in local politics as a member of the council of the London Borough of Wandsworth . In the general election of February 28, 1974 , he was elected a member of the House of Commons for the first time in the newly created constituency of Luton West and won there with a clear lead of 5,042 votes. While he received 20,083 votes (42.02 percent), his opponent from the Conservative Party , Robert Atkins , received 15,041 votes (31.47 percent).

During his membership in parliament he established his reputation as a class fighter who, as a supporter of the leading politician of the left wing of the Labor Party, Tony Benn, called for socialist planning through state investments in the private sector, the management of which he branded as " Pavlovian cripples", and condemned everyone Attempt by the then Heath administration to influence wage policy. He also led a successful campaign against the directors of the 1974 bankrupt charter airline Court Line , from which numerous pilots in his constituency lived.

In the subsequent elections on October 10, 1974 , he was able to expand his lead over Atkins even further and this time even had 6,439 votes more than this. He received 20,402 votes (46.74 percent) in this election, while Atkins now only received 13,963 votes (31.99 percent).

Tony Benn's Supporter and Parliamentary Private Secretary

When Benn came under fire from moderate cabinet members for his plans to create a National Enterprise Board as Minister of Industry , Sedgemore spoke out in favor of him. Both worked closely together in the 1975 referendum on Britain's membership in the European Communities , the outcome of which he described as a step towards a one-party state . He was involved in almost every internal party backbencher revolt against the economic policies of the then Labor governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan and, as a member of the Select Committee on Expenditure, he submitted a series of minority reports against what he saw as the sad influence on the pro-Tory discontinued public service.

In 1976 he wrote the program for an alternative economic policy for the political left, which included import controls, industrial participation and the nationalization of banks. When Benn, now Minister of Energy, wanted to appoint Sedgemore as his Parliamentary Private Secretary , Prime Minister Callaghan asked for a guarantee as to Sedgemore's loyalty to government policy, which he waived after a month, so that Sedgemore took over as Benn's Parliamentary Private Secretary January 1977 could compete.

This he held for twenty months until September 1978. He showed his opposition to parts of government policy only by the fact that he usually left parliament when Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey gave a speech. Callaghan eventually ordered his dismissal after presenting a secret cabinet document to a House Committee on the expected effects of Britain's accession to the European Monetary System (EMS), exposing Healey. Sedgemore tried to upgrade his dismissal by presenting it in the House of Commons as a matter of honor.

Election defeat in 1979

In the elections of May 3, 1979 Sedgemore lost the constituency of Luton West with a difference of 246 votes narrowly to its new opponent from the Conservative Party, John Russell Carlisle . Carlisle received 21,230 votes (44.09 percent), while he received 20,984 votes (43.58 percent). In the election review, Labor Party press secretary Percy Clark described the Conservative Tories' win as a labor victory.

He then moved to work for the television station Granada Television , albeit without success. His first television program about the race riots in Liverpool 's Toxteth district in 1981 was canceled for fear of new rioting between the police and colored residents and he himself was suspended after his protest. The second broadcast, which was to deal with a never-released Bank of England paper and two classified documents, was also canceled.

In the following four years, Tony Benn's wing regained influence within the party apparatus, especially when the party right-wing Shirley Williams , Roy Jenkins , William Rodgers and David Owen resigned and in 1981 founded the Social Democratic Party . When Tony Benn only narrowly lost the election as vice chairman in 1981 to Denis Healey, the importance of the Sedgemore-supported party left became very clear. At the time, he himself was the organizer of the left-wing party within the Labor Party's coordinating committee and, without fear of internal party consequences, was able to publish The Secret Constitution (1980), in which he claimed that the public service was obliged to cede any kind of left government prevent.

Constituency Hackney South and Shoreditch 1983-2005

In the elections of June 9, 1983 , Sedgemore was finally re-elected to the House of Commons with a majority of 7,691 votes in the constituency of Hackney South and Shoreditch . He received 16,621 votes (43.3 percent) in his first election in this constituency, while his opponent from the Conservative Party, Peter JP Croft, only got 8,930 votes (23.3 percent). The previous constituency holder of the Labor Party, Ronald Brown , had also switched to the Social Democratic Party and came in third place with 7,025 votes (18.3 percent).

He held that constituency for almost 22 years until the May 5, 2005 elections . In doing so, he achieved clear majorities, some of them absolute.

He lost his influence in the early 1980s and 1990s when the party was reoriented towards the political center under Neil Kinnock , John Smith and Tony Blair , all of whom distrusted him, especially after his contributions to the House of Commons became more brutal such as when he referred to Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath as "the Harlot and the Sailor". He made no secret of his contempt for New Labor . Besides Enoch Powell, he was the only member of the House of Commons who refused to publish his interest income.

Sedgemore had his greatest success in 1985 when he made allegations of fraud at Johnson Matthey Bankers (JMB), which led to police investigations and some arrests. Even the then Chancellor of the Exchequer in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government said: “I think I could get you a job in the Fraud Squad” ('I think I could get you a job in the Fraud Squad'). On the other hand, he was expelled from the House of Commons for five days after accusing Lawson, whom he described as a “snivelling little git”, of perverting the law in the JMB case.

Sedgemore advocated a relaxation of the law of defamation for years, but in 1990 criticized the former member of the House of Commons Robert Kilroy-Silk for favoring an expansion of the right to blasphemy after controversy over the book The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie and he a Feared of a decline in Muslim voters. He also ridiculed Robert Leigh-Pemberton , the Governor of the Bank of England for his regulatory errors, as a "useless deadbeat" and was no less critical of his successor Eddie George after the collapse of Barings Bank in 1995.

Break with the Labor Party and switch to the Liberal Democrats

In a speech in 1998 he denigrated the admission of female Labor MPs who had taken place in recent years, like the " women of Stepford ... a chip was implanted in their brains to make them receptive" ('Stepford Wives ... who've had the chip inserted into their brain to keep them on message '). Ultimately, his break with the Labor Party and his move to the Liberal Democrats in the elections on May 5, 2005 also led to a loss of reputation among his party friends who were still well-disposed to him.

Although Sedgemore's behavior had some part in the Liberal Democrats 'gain in the 2005 election, it increasingly embarrassed the party, especially when he personally attacked the new Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the 2007 Liberal Democrats' conference .

The 1964 marriage with Audrey Reece resulted in a son.

Publications

• The How and Why of Socialism , 1977
• Secretary of State , 1978
• The Secret Constitution , 1980
• Pitiless Pursuit , 1994
• The Insider's Guide to Parliament , 1995

Web links

• Entry in the Hansard
• Proof of publication in the Open Library
• Brian Sedgemore, Labor MP - obituary. Abrasive Bennite Labor MP who angered his colleagues by defecting to the Liberal Democrats . In: The Daily Telegraph, May 6, 2015