Constituency : Islington South West 1970-74, Islington South and Finsbury 1974-82 ( Labour ), 1982-83 (SDP)
George was the last defecting MP from Labour after 6 months as an independent.
George was born in Scotland, the son of a hotelier .. He was educated at Dunfermline High School and Manchester University. He became a civil servant in the Commonwealth Relations department. He worked for Labour as their Commonwealth Officer from 1963.He first stood for Henley in 1966 after which he returned to the civil service before being elected in Islington in 1970. George is remembered for being an expert parliamentarian who once used his knowledge of the rulebook to inconvenience ministers and force the government to reverse a decision to close a cancer ward in his constituency. He is also remembered for inserting an amendment into the Scotland Act in 1978 that devolution required the support of 40% of the electorate not just a majority in the referendum. As he intended this scuppered devolution but it also brought down the government.Callaghan did not hold him responsible and appointed him a home affairs spokesman in opposition. George was fiercely independent and warned that votes on party lines were "killing the Commons stone dead".
George was usually successful in his battles with the Islington left but he was angered by the time he was having to put into drawn out constituency battles. He resigned the Labour whip in 1981 but held off from joining the SDP for six months due to his agnosticism over Europe. He became the party's education and science spokesman.
George's defeat in 1983 was the narrowest of all those suffered by the defectors. His successful opponent Chris Smith was in the closet at the time. It's not clear if George knew he was gay but if it had come out at the time George would probably have won. Smith had come out by the 1987 election when George again ran him close.
Between 1984 and 1992 George was chief executive of the Libraries Association. After retiring, he was active in the Association of Former MPs, serving as its Treasurer
George supported the merger with the Liberals and there's a reference in Paddy Ashdown's diaries to consulting with George over parliamentary tactics after he became leader in 1988 but thereafter George seems to have withdrawn from parliamentary politics. He remained interested in politics with occasional letters to the press and the odd lecture. He was still unconvinced about devolution in 1997 although in 2012 he recognised its success.
He later suffered from Alzheimer's disease and died in 2018 aged 87.
No comments:
Post a Comment