Tam Dalyell

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tam Dalyell, 1991

Sir Thomas "Tam" Dalyell, 11th Baronet (born August 9, 1932 in Edinburgh ; † January 26, 2017 ) was a British Labor Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons between 1962 and 2005, and most recently from June 2001 to May 2005 was the longest member of the House of Commons Father of the House .

Life

He was born in 1932 with the name Thomas Loch . He came from a long-established Scottish family and was the son of Lt.-Col. Gordon Loch († 1953) and Dame Eleanor Isabel Dalyell, 10th Baronetess (1895–1972). In 1938 his father changed the family name to Dalyell after his wife's family . After attending Eton College, he studied at the University of Oxford and became a teacher at Moray House College, University of Edinburgh . After completing his studies, he worked as a teacher in Bo'ness .

In a by -election on June 14, 1962, he was elected as a candidate of the Labor Party for the first time as a member of the House of Commons and represented there first the constituency of West Lothian and then since the general election of June 9, 1983 until his No renewed candidacy on May 5, 2005 the constituency of Linlithgow . In his first election he was able to prevail against Billy Wolfe , the candidate of the Scottish National Party .

After the Labor Party's victory in the general election in 1964 , he was during the tenure of Prime Minister Harold Wilson from 1964 to 1965 and then again from 1967 to 1970 Parliamentary Private Secretary to Richard Crossman , who was first Minister for Housing and Local Government and later Lord President of the Council and was Minister for Health and Social Affairs.

During the Labor Party opposition from 1970 to 1974 and 1979 to 1997, he earned a reputation as a backbencher with an eye for the essentials, ready to advance unpopular issues and relentlessly question ministers. In the mid-1970s, on the other hand, he was also an opponent of his own group's policy on Scotland . When his mother died in 1972, he inherited the title of Baronet , of the Binns in the County of Linlithgow, created in 1685 in the Baronetage of Nova Scotia . Between 1975 and 1979 he was also a member of the European Parliament .

During the Falklands War in 1982 he requested a detailed investigation into the sinking of the Argentine ship General Belgrano by the British nuclear submarine Conqueror . Shortly after the war ended, on December 21, 1982, he charged Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with “coldly and deliberately the order to sink the Belgrano , knowing full well that an honorable peace was in prospect, in the expectation ... that the torpedoes of the "Conqueror" [the conqueror] also torpedoed the peace negotiations. " Numerous other opponents of the war followed this view and emphasized above all that the ship had sailed to the west at the time of the attack, i.e. it had moved away from the Falkland Islands . They therefore accused the British government (to this day) of deliberately sinking the General Belgrano in order to fail an ongoing attempt at mediation by Peru.

He later stepped up during the Second Gulf War in 1991 for the investigation of the environmental damage it caused .

Most recently, Dalyell was from 2001 until he left the House of Commons in 2005 as a member with the longest membership in the House of Commons "Father of the House".

In 2003 he became rector of the University of Edinburgh and held this office until 2006. He wrote numerous non-fiction books about his political experiences and a biography of his political mentor Dick Crossman.

On January 26, 2017, Dalyell died after a brief illness at the age of 84.

From his 1963 marriage to the Hon. Kathleen Wheatley, daughter of John Wheatley, Baron Wheatley , he left behind a son, Gordon Wheatley Dalyell (* 1965), who inherited his baronet title, and a daughter named Moira Eleanor Dalyell (* 1968).

Publications

  • Ship school , 1963
  • Devolution , 1977
  • One man's Falklands , 1982
  • A science policy for Britain , 1983
  • Thatcher's torpedo , 1983
  • Thatcher, patterns of deceit , 1986
  • Misrule , 1987
  • Dick Crossman: A Portrait , 1989

Web links and sources

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Freedman: The Official History of the Falklands Campaign. Vol. II, 2007, p. 743
  2. ↑ Gavshon, Rice: The Sinking of the Belgrano. 1984, p. 102
  3. ^ Former Labor MP Tam Dalyell dies. BBC News , January 26, 2017, accessed January 26, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Dalyell, Tam
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dalyell, Sir Thomas, 11th Baronet (full name); Thomas Hole
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British author and politician, Member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Edinburgh
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 2017