Joseph Dean, Baron Dean of Beswick

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Joseph Jabez Dean, Baron Dean of Beswick (born June 3, 1922 in Manchester , † February 26, 1999 in Rochdale , Lancashire ) was a British politician and life peer .

life and career

Dean, who would later leave the church, came from a devout Roman Catholic family. He had five sisters, but was the only son of the engineer John Dean and his wife. He received his education at the Christian St. Anne's School in Ancoats . The teaching conditions at the school were difficult at the time, which was mainly due to the class size of 50 boys on average. Although Dean appreciated the community at school, in 1978 he said he was glad that such conditions were now rare in the UK.

After finishing school, Dean started an apprenticeship at the British railway manufacturer Beyer-Peacock . There he was involved in the production of locomotives for the Indian Railways in Burma , today's Myanmar, before he volunteered for the Royal Navy in 1942 , the year of the war . There he was particularly valuable due to his engineering experience in drawing gun barrels. Military technology was to fascinate Dean all his life; even in his time as a member of parliament, he was regarded as the walking lexicon of the British navy of the 1940s.

He stayed with Beyer-Peacock until 1959, before taking up a new position at Metropolitan-Vickers in Trafford Park . In the same year he was elected for the first time for the Labor Party in the Manchester City Council, of which he was a member until 1974.

In the general election in February 1974 , Dean made the leap to the House of Commons , where he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Charles Morris , then Secretary of State for the Civil Service. He held this office until 1977. During his time as a parliamentarian, he was particularly committed to regional interests and criticized, for example, that the city of Leeds had to suffer a lot from the government's regional policy. In addition, he was involved in housing policy.

From 1978 to 1979, Dean served as Assistant Whip under Michael Cocks for the final months of the James Callaghan administration . So it was his job to ensure discipline in the voting behavior of the Labor MPs. Even during the opposition, from 1982 to 1983 he was once again Whip for his party.

In the 1983 election , Dean surprisingly lost to Michael Meadowcroft of the Liberal Party in his Leeds West constituency . Suddenly unemployed by leaving the House of Commons, it was a great relief to Dean when he was named a Life Peer and received a seat in the House of Lords in September of that year . Since then he has officially carried the title of Baron Dean of Beswick, of West Leeds in the County of West Yorkshire .

In the House of Lords, too, Dean contributed regularly to the end. In the month of his death he attended a meeting on the situation of the British police. He left behind his wife, Helen Hill, to whom he had been married since 1945, and a daughter.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Obituary on independent.co.uk, accessed on March 7, 2015
  2. ↑ a b Joseph Jabez Dean, Baron Dean of Beswick on thepeerage.com , accessed September 11, 2016.
  3. ↑ Joseph Dean in Hansard (English)
personal data
SURNAME Dean, Joseph, Baron Dean of Beswick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dean, Joe; Dean, Joseph Jabez, Baron Dean of Beswick (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician, Member of the House of Commons, Life Peer
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Manchester
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1999
Place of death Rochdale , Lancashire