Ron Brown (politician, 1940)

Ronald Duncan Mclaren Brown (born June 29, 1940 in West Pilton , Edinburgh , Scotland , † August 3, 2007 in Edinburgh), known as Ron Brown and often referred to as Red Ron , was a Member of Parliament for the Scottish Labor Party . He was elected to the House of Commons for the first time in the 1979 general election and represented his constituency of Edinburgh Leith until the 1992 general election , when he was no longer elected. Brown has been suspended from his mandate on a number of occasions, most notably the 1988 incident when he damaged the ceremonial staff.

Early life

Brown was born in West Pilton , Edinburgh, to a working class family. His father worked in mechanical engineering. He attended Pennywell Primary School , Ainslie Park High School, and the Bristo Technical Institute . He completed his military service with the Royal Corps of Signals and then did a five-year professional training as a machine operator . An accident at work while working as an electrician resulted in partial facial paralysis and scars, although he was treated surgically. He became an active member of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers . Together with his wife May, whom he married in 1963, he raised two sons.

In the early 1970s he was elected to Central Leith in the Edinburgh Town Council and in 1974 in the Lothian Regional Council . During the 1970s he visited Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya several times and tried to establish trade links between Scotland and the North African state. Statements in support of the communist governments in Afghanistan , Albania and North Korea could also be heard from his mouth .

Parliamentary career

Brown was elected to the House of Commons as the Edinburgh Leith constituency representative in 1979 after his predecessor, Labor MP Ronald King Murray , retired to become a Senator of the College of Justice . Brown won the seat by 3,000 votes. Although he was judged controversially, Brown was popular and built on his lead in the subsequent elections, in the 1987 general election , his lead was more than 11,000 votes.

While he was in the House of Commons, he was suspended three times by the Speaker. In April 1981 he was expelled for five sitting days for calling Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn a liar and in July 1981 for twenty sitting days after he posted a protest banner on his MP's bench.

In 1988, during a debate about poll tax , he seized the ceremonial baton and threw it on the floor. He then agreed to read out a written apology in the House of Commons, but added further comments on the occasion and described his apology as "garbage", which earned him a 20-day ban. He also had to pay the repair bill of £ 1,500 . His group banned him for three months.

During a tax strike, he refused to pay these taxes and ended up appearing in a sheriff's court .

He was expelled from the Labor Party in 1991 after receiving a £ 1,000 penalty warrant for damaging property for causing damage to his ex-girlfriend's apartment in Sussex. As a result, it was no longer elected by Labor in the 1992 election. He tried to keep his chances of being elected as an independent candidate, but finished fifth with a 10.3% share of the vote. He was succeeded by the official Labor candidate Malcolm Chisholm .

Life after the parliamentary career

After he was no longer a member of the House of Commons, he remained active in public functions, for example as President of the Edinburgh Trade Unions Council .

Brown was a candidate for the Scottish Socialist Party in the 1999 Scottish Parliament election but was not elected. After Solidarity , led by Tommy Sheridan , split off, Rown remained a member of the SSP.

His wife died in 1995. Brown succumbed to liver failure in 2007 after a long illness.

literature

• Obituary , The Guardian , Aug. 6, 2007
• Obituary , The Independent , Aug 6, 2007
• Obituary , The Times , Aug 6, 2007
• Obituary , The Daily Telegraph , Aug 6, 2007

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BBC obituary for Ron Brown

predecessor	Office	successor
Ronald King Murray	Member of the House of Commons for Edinburgh Leith 1979–1992	Malcolm Chisholm