Dick tavern

Baron Taverne giving a lecture (2007)

Dick Taverne, Baron Taverne QC (* 18th October 1928 ) is a British politician of the Labor Party , Democratic Labor Party , Social Democratic Party (SDP) and, finally, the Liberal Democrats , the more than ten years the constituency Lincoln in the House of Commons represented and has been a member of the House of Lords since 1996 .

Life

Lawyer and Member of the House of Commons

After visiting the Charterhouse School studied tavern first philosophy and history of antiquity at Balliol College of Oxford University . After a subsequent degree in jurisprudence , he received the lawyer's approval as 1954 Barrister and was then as a lawyer working.

Taverne began his political career first in the Labor Party and applied for this first unsuccessfully for a member of the House of Commons in the general election on October 8, 1959 in the constituency of Wandsworth and Putney . On March 8, 1962, he was at a by-election ( by-election ) in the constituency Lincoln first elected deputies of the lower house and was this until his resignation on 16 October 1972. The title of it was in 1965 Kronanwalts ( Queen's Counsel ) awarded.

During this time he was in the government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson, first between 1966 and 1968 Parliamentary Undersecretary in the Home Office and then until 1969 Minister of State in the Treasury and then until the end of Wilson's tenure in 1970 Financial Secretary to the Treasury Treasury ).

After resigning from the Labor Party in 1972, he became a member of the Democratic Labor Party and was re-elected to the House of Commons on March 1, 1973 in a by-election in the constituency of Lincoln , which he this time until the general election on May 10. October 1974 belonged. In 1979 Taverne was also a member of an international independent body to monitor the work of the European Commission .

He later joined also from the Democratic Labor Party and became a member of the founded in 1981 Social Democratic Party (SDP) for which he 1982 by-elections in the constituencies Southwark and Peckham and general election on June 9, 1983 in the constituency Dulwich unsuccessfully for a seat applied in the House of Commons. During this time he was a member of the National Committee of the SDP between 1981 and 1987 and chairman of the Public Policy Center from 1983 to 1987 .

Member of the Liberal Democrats and House of Lords

In 1988 he finally became a member of the newly formed Liberal Democrats and was a member of their Federal Political Committee between 1989 and 1990.

In 1996 Dick Taverne was raised to the nobility as a Life Peer with the title Baron Taverne , of Pimlico in the City of Westminster, and has since been a member of the House of Lords .

Baron Tavern, the 1996 to 2008 Chairman of the drug and alcohol withdrawal facility Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment Ltd was was during his membership in the House of Lords 1998-2005 spokesman for the faction of the Liberal Democrats for the Treasury and at the same time between 2001 and 2005 Speaker his party's on the euro . Furthermore, he has been chairman of the organization Sense About Sense , which he founded, since 2002 , which endeavors to present the sciences in a way that is understandable for the general public.

Publications

• The Future of the Left: Lincoln and After (1974), ISBN 0-224-00950-8
• The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy, and the New Fundamentalism (2005), ISBN 0-19-280485-5

literature

• Dick Taverne , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 31/1973 of July 23, 1973, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

• Entry on Parliament's homepage (accessed on June 30, 2012)
• Dick Taverne in Hansard (English)