David Winnick

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David Winnick
MP
Member of Parliament
for Walsall North
Assumed office
1979
Preceded by Robin Hodgson
Majority 1,937 (5.2%)
Member of Parliament
for Croydon South
In office
31 March 1966 – 18 June 1970
Preceded by Richard Thompson
Succeeded by Richard Thompson
Personal details
Born David Julian Winnick
(1933-06-26) 26 June 1933 (age 90)
Brighton, Sussex, England[1]
Nationality British
Political party Labour

David Julian Winnick (born 26 June 1933) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Walsall North since 1979. Previously he was the MP for Croydon South from 1966 to 1970.

Early life

Born into a British Jewish family,[2] Winnick was an advertising manager and a branch chairman of the Clerical and Administrative Workers Union. He was a councillor from 1959 on Willesden Borough Council, then on the London Borough of Brent.

Parliamentary career

After unsuccessfully fighting Harwich in 1964, Winnick was elected in 1966 as MP for Croydon South (now the area covered roughly by Croydon Central constituency), defeating incumbent Richard Thompson. He lost the seat to Thompson in 1970. After completing a diploma in social administration at the London School of Economics, he stood again in Croydon Central in October 1974 and was returned for Walsall North in 1979.

Winnick is generally regarded as on the left of the Labour Party and has a strong commitment to human rights. That commitment made him a strong voice in the House of Commons against both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein and he supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

He was a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary body from its formation in 1990, and British co-chair, 1997-2005.

On 9 November 2005, Winnick's amendment to a government bill on detention of terrorist suspects without trial, proposing that the maximum period of detention should be 28 days rather than 90, passed in the House of Commons by 323 votes to 290, shortly after the government's 90-day proposal was defeated by 322 to 291. This was Tony Blair's first Commons defeat on a whipped vote, after nearly nine years as Prime Minister, and may come to be seen as a critical moment of his term in office.

In January 2009, he urged the communities minister to deplore the fact that Richard Williamson, a British-born bishop and Holocaust denier, had been brought back into the fold by the Vatican.[3]

Winnick played a prominent role in the campaign to force the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin. This followed controversy from May 2009 concerning MPs' disclosure of expenses.[4]

In the 2010 General Election, Walsall North was one of the most closely contested seats in the election, with Winnick defeating his Conservative opponent by 990 votes.[5] In 2015 however, Winnick regained a comfortable majority of 1,937, despite the Labour Party suffering huge losses across the country.[6] In his victory speech, he criticised the way in which his Conservative opponent had conducted their election campaign.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whoswho/U40375
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ No excuse for anti-Semitism
  4. ↑ Under-fire Speaker to step down
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Croydon South
1966–1970		 Succeeded by
Richard Thompson
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Walsall North
1979–present		 Incumbent
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