Hugh Gaitskell (Life: 1906-1963. His first period as party leader between the 1983 and 1987 general elections was dominated by his struggle with the hard-left Militant tendency, then still a dominant force in the party. The NUM was widely regarded as the labour movement's praetorian guard and the strike convulsed the Labour movement.[who?] He was introduced to the House of Lords on 31 January 2005, after being created, on 28 January, Baron Kinnock, of Bedwellty in the County of Gwent. After the party suffered a landslide defeat in the 1983 election, Kinnock was elected Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition. He accepted membership in the European Economic Community, whereas the party had pledged immediate withdrawal from it under Michael Foot. The US president-elect says the nationwide vaccine rollout so far has been "a dismal failure". Recognising that, we should stop Brexit to save the NHS – or, at very least, mitigate the damage by seeking European Economic Area membership.”[56], Kinnock met Glenys Kinnock (née Parry) in the early 1960s whilst studying at University College, Cardiff, where they were known as "the power and the glory" (Glenys the power), and they married on 25 March 1967. [67], Media related to Neil Kinnock at Wikimedia Commons, (Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud), For a history of the Militant tendency in the Labour Party, see Eric Shaw, Notably when Kinnock appeared, as the guest presenter in an episode of, Vice-President of the European Commission, European Commissioner for Administrative Reform, Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Science, University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, protested at Government restriction of their budgets, "South East Wales Public Life – Neil Kinnock – Labour politician from Tredegar", "Kinnock is Leader at his Rachel's Wedding Party", "1983: 'Dream ticket' wins Labour leadership", "Leader's speech, Bournemouth 1985: Neil Kinnock (Labour)", "Neil Kinnock, Militant speech, Labour party conference, October 1985", "UK General Election 1987 Campaign – Kinnock the Movie", "Summary results of the 1987 General Election", "VOTE2001 | THE ELECTION BATTLES 1945–1997", "Biden's Debate Finale: An Echo From Abroad", "Biden Withdraws Bid for President in Wake of Furor", "Mrs Thatcher Resigns – BBC 1 O'Clock News", "Poll tracker: Interactive guide to the opinion polls", "Ballet star shows off charity portraits", "Rupert Murdoch: 'Sun wot won it' headline was tasteless and wrong", "Mirror Style Guide: Front page headline of the Mirror, 1987", "General Election 2010 – A century of Daily Mirror front pages – Mirror Online", "BBC One – Coming Home, Series 6, Neil Kinnock", House of Lords Journal 238 (Session 2004–05), Neil Kinnock warns Jeremy Corbyn: ‘Stop Brexit to save the NHS’, "New faces: Alan Sugar and Glenys Kinnock", "Ed Miliband: he may be an atheist, but is he a secularist? In 2018, Kinnock stated, “The truth is that we can either take the increasingly plain risks and costs of leaving the EU or have the stability, growth and revenues vital for crucial public services like the NHS and social care. [63], Kinnock has been described as an agnostic[64] and an atheist. Mr Kinnock managed to change Labour, making it a credible party of the disaster of the late 1970s and early 1980s. [55], Kinnock strongly opposed Brexit. [10] Although Kinnock had come from the Tribune left-wing of the party, he parted company with many of his former allies after his appointment to the Shadow Cabinet. Until the summer of 2009, he was also Chairman of the British Council and President of Cardiff University. Following Labour's defeat at the 1979 general election, James Callaghan appointed Kinnock to the Shadow Cabinet as education spokesman. He resigned unexpectedly in 1976. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Ed Miliband's campaign for leadership of the Labour Party in 2010, and was reported as telling activists, when Miliband won, "We've got our party back" – although Miliband, like Kinnock, failed to lead the party back into government, and resigned after the Conservatives were re-elected with a slim majority in 2015. Kinnock explained his change of attitude, despite the continuing presence of ninety hereditary peers and appointment by patronage, by asserting that the Lords was a good base for campaigning. Neil Kinnock’s speech in Bridgend, Glamorgan, on 7 June 1983, rates as one of the finest speeches ever made in British politics. The Conservatives' 1986 conference was well-managed, and effectively relaunched the Conservatives as a party of radical free-market economic liberalism. Wilson’s lecturing style was punctuated with jokes. A version was first publicly disclosed in 1996, by the man who beat Lord Kinnock, Sir John Major. In secret, Labour's aim was to secure second place in order to remain as Official Opposition.[22]. Opinion polls showed that voters favoured retaining the United Kingdom's nuclear weapons, (Labour's policy, supported by Kinnock, was of unilateral nuclear disarmament), and believed that the Conservatives would be better than Labour at defending the country. Labour won extra seats in Scotland, Wales and Northern England, but lost ground particularly in Southern England and London, where the Conservatives still dominated. .css-1xgx53b-Link{font-family:ReithSans,Helvetica,Arial,freesans,sans-serif;font-weight:700;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:#FFFFFF;}.css-1xgx53b-Link:hover,.css-1xgx53b-Link:focus{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}Read about our approach to external linking. The prime minister’s political opponents took to social media during the campaign, urging young people to vote. [7], He has been married to Glenys Kinnock since 1967. ... We have to elect a leader capable of taking us to victory in the 2020 election and of being Labour prime minister. Kinnock was determined to move the party's political standing to a centrist position, in order to improve its chances of winning a future general election. Who should have been Prime Minster but never got the chance? [42] The following day's headline in The Sun was "It's The Sun Wot Won It", which Rupert Murdoch, many years later at his April 2012 appearance before the Leveson Inquiry, stated was both "tasteless and wrong" and led to the editor Kelvin MacKenzie receiving a reprimand. On polling day, Labour easily took second place, but with only a 31% share of the vote to the SDP-Liberal Alliance's 22%. He was almost immediately in serious difficulty as a result of Arthur Scargill's decision to lead his union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) into a national strike (in opposition to pit closures) without a nationwide ballot. He now became one of the Vice-Presidents of the European Commission, with responsibility for Administrative Reform and the Audit, Linguistics and Logistics Directorates General. He discarded the rhetoric of class warfare. A new Prime Minister and the fact that Kinnock was now the longest-serving current leader of a major party reduced the impact of calls for "Time for a Change". [34] Since Major's election as Leader of the Conservative Party (and becoming Prime Minister), Kinnock had spent the end of 1990[35][dead link] and most of 1991 putting pressure on Major to call a general election that year, but Major had held out and by the autumn he had insisted that there would be no general election in 1991. But the intriguing feature of the Kinnock version is point two, where the draft says he will publish this guidance note "in accordance with our policy on freedom of information". It is one of a number of official papers prepared for the possibility of a Kinnock premiership, which I have been .css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link{color:#3F3F42;}.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited{color:#696969;}.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited{font-weight:700;border-bottom:1px solid #BABABA;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link:hover,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited:hover,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link:focus,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited:focus{border-bottom-color:currentcolor;border-bottom-width:2px;color:#B80000;}@supports (text-underline-offset:0.25em){.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited{border-bottom:none;-webkit-text-decoration:underline #BABABA;text-decoration:underline #BABABA;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-skip-ink:none;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;text-underline-offset:0.25em;}.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link:hover,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited:hover,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:link:focus,.css-1xgj2ad-InlineLink:visited:focus{-webkit-text-decoration-color:currentcolor;text-decoration-color:currentcolor;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:2px;text-decoration-thickness:2px;color:#B80000;}}trying to obtain under freedom of information. The violence built up because the single tactic chosen was that of mass picketing, and so we saw policing on a scale and with a system that has never been seen in Britain before. This made him disliked by many EU staff members, although the pressure on budgets that largely drove these changes had actually been imposed on the Commission from above by the Member States in Council. [36], At the 1992 general election, Labour made considerable progress – reducing the Conservatives' majority to just 21 seats. He was first elected to the House of Commons on 18 June 1970, and became a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in October 1978. [25] Significantly, Labour had gained twenty seats at the election.[26]. [44] Less expected was the Financial Times backing Kinnock at the 1992 general election. In 1924, Ramsay MacDonald became the first ever Labour Prime Minister, leading a minority administration which lasted nine months. They have a son, Stephen and a daughter, Rachel. They have two children – son Stephen Kinnock (born January 1970, now a Labour MP), and daughter Rachel Kinnock (born 1971). [20] Labour, now sporting a continental social democratic style emblem of a rose (replacing the party's first logo, the Liberty logo), appeared to be able to run the governing Conservatives close, but Margaret Thatcher did not let Labour's makeover go unchallenged. [24] Labour was still more than ten percentage points behind the Conservatives, who retained a three-figure majority in the House of Commons. Briefing papers not 'verbose' enough to be revealed, Inside the world's richest esports player's mansion. [1], Kinnock, an only child, was born in Tredegar, Wales. Kinnock was known as a left-winger, and gained prominence for his attacks on Margaret Thatcher's handling of the Falklands War in 1982, although it was in fact this conflict which saw support for the Conservative government increase, and contribute to its landslide re-election the following year. Neil Kinnock was born on March 28, 1942 in Tredegar, Gwent [now Blaenau, Gwent], Wales as Neil Gordon Kinnock. [citation needed], In the three years leading up to the 1992 general election, Labour had consistently topped the opinion polls, with 1991 seeing the Conservatives (rejuvenated by the arrival of a new leader with John Major the previous November) snatch the lead off Labour more than once before Labour regained it. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. "No prime minister in Britain will ever be able to go to war without the endorsement of a majority of the House of Commons." Read about our approach to external linking. “Wilson didn’t wield the power he got with a big majority to make the party sing from the same hymn sheet — loud, strong and proud — and he was overtaken by prime ministeritis,” Kinnock … He resigned unexpectedly in 1976. He went on to the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff (now Cardiff University), where he graduated in 1965 with a degree in Industrial Relations and History. On 26 April 2006, Kinnock was given a six-month driving ban after being found guilty of two speeding offences along the M4 motorway, west of London. When she was made a life peer in 2009, they became one of the few couples both to hold titles in their own right. .css-14iz86j-BoldText{font-weight:bold;}This has to be one of the more ironic disclosures I have received in response to a Freedom of Information request. ", His peerage meant that the Labour and Conservative parties were equal in numbers in the upper house of Parliament (subsequently the number of Labour members overtook the number of Conservative members for many years). Following Labour's landslide defeat at the 1983 general election, Michael Foot resigned as Leader of the Labour Party aged 69, and from the outset; it was expected that the much younger Kinnock would succeed him. ", Neil Kinnock on the Home Secretary’s ambitions, and Cameron, contributions in Parliament by Neil Kinnock, Announcement of his introduction at the House of Lords, Orders of precedence in the United Kingdom, Leaders of the Opposition of the United Kingdom, European Commissioners for Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud, European Commissioners from the United Kingdom, History of the socialist movement in the United Kingdom, Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation, Organisations associated with the Labour Party, Labour Friends of Palestine & the Middle East, National Union of Labour and Socialist Clubs, Socialist Environment and Resources Association, Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neil_Kinnock&oldid=997740755, Leaders of the Opposition (United Kingdom), Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, People associated with Cardiff University, Articles with dead external links from June 2016, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2019, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2010, Articles with unsourced statements from June 2017, Articles with dead external links from January 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2021, Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with UKPARL identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 2 January 2021, at 00:42. Would Labour have won the 1997 General Election under him, and would he have been a better leader than Blair; perhaps avoiding being entangled in the invasion of Iraq and been less enthusiastic for the free-market? He was finally elected as Labour Party leader on 2 October 1983, with 71% of the vote, and Roy Hattersley was elected as his deputy; their prospective partnership was considered to be a "dream ticket".[9]. Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock PC (born 28 March 1942) is a British politician. The government argues that releasing them would encourage officials to write future briefings that are "excessively detailed" and "verbose". ... No prime minister in Britain will ever be able to go to war without the endorsement of a majority of the House of Commons. He returned as prime minister in 1974 and held Britain's first referendum on membership of the European Economic Community, as it was then called, in 1975. A lot of why Neil Kinnock (Lord Kinnock) did not become PM is because of his South Wales Accent. In the build up to the 1979 Welsh devolution referendum, the Labour government was in favour of devolution for Wales. [19] By 1986, the party's position appeared to strengthen further with excellent local election results and a thorough rebranding of the party under the direction of Kinnock's director of communications Peter Mandelson, as well as seizing the Fulham seat in West London from the Conservatives at an April by-election. Under his leadership, the Labour Party abandoned unpopular old positions, especially the nationalisation of certain industries, although this process was not completed until future party leader Tony Blair removed Clause IV from the party's manifesto in 1995. Overview. He was obliged to resign as part of the forced, collective resignation of the Commission in 1999. This is the front page of a set of procedural guidelines that would have been distributed to his ministerial team under his name, if his government had ever been formed - it has the initials NK at the bottom. Neil Kinnock and Ronald Reagan 1987 Neil Kinnock never did become prime minister. Kinnock announced his resignation as Labour Party leader on 13 April 1992, ending nearly a decade in the role. However, the Conservative government's majority had come down from 144 seats in 1983 to 102. It is a document that was never used. Following Labour's landslide defeat at the 1983 general election, Michael Foot resigned as Leader of the Labour Party aged 69, and from the outset; it was expected that the much younger Kinnock would succeed him. However, by the end of 1991, the Conservative majority still stood at 88 seats and Labour needed to win more than ninety new seats to gain an overall majority, although there was still the hope of forming a minority or coalition government if Labour failed to win a majority. Is now the time for Neil Kinnock’s Labour to take back power after over a decade in the wilderness? The majority in the group were now disenchanted with entryism, and chose to function outside Labour's ranks, forming the Socialist Party. [12] In 1985, he made his criticisms public in a speech to Labour's conference:[13].mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, The strike wore on. Wilson was the party leader and outgoing prime minister (1964-70; 1974-76) when Kinnock was elected to parliament. Wilson’s lecturing style was punctuated with jokes. He has been married to Glenys Kinnock since March 25, 1967. Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock says Jeremy Corbyn must back the renewal of the Trident missile system to avoid electoral defeat. In December 1989, he abandoned the Labour policy on closed shops—a decision seen by many as a move away from traditional socialist policies to a more European-wide agenda, and also a move to rid the party of its image of being run by trade unions. A few months after the general election, Kinnock gained brief attention in the United States in August 1987 when it was discovered that then-US Senator Joe Biden of Delaware (and future 46th President) plagiarised one of Kinnock's speeches during his 1988 presidential campaign in a speech at a Democratic Party debate in Iowa. [50] His term of office as a Commissioner was due to expire on 30 October 2004, but was delayed owing to the withdrawal of the new Commissioners. [18] In June 1986, the Labour Party finally expelled the deputy leader of Liverpool council, the high-profile Militant supporter Derek Hatton, who was found guilty of "manipulating the rules of the district Labour party". [40], On the day of the general election, The Sun newspaper ran a front page featuring Kinnock with the headline "If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights". He remains on the Advisory Council of the Institute for Public Policy Research, which he helped set up in the 1980s. Bevan was considered and poetic. The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has privately warned party colleagues that backing a Brexit deal could be politically “lethal”, saying the prime minister must be made to “own” it. The rise in Conservative support came in spite of the economic recession and sharp rise in unemployment which affected Britain in 1991. Neil Kinnock's showing in the opinion polls dipped; before Thatcher's resignation, Labour had been up to 10 points ahead of the Conservatives in the opinion polls (an Ipsos MORI poll in April 1990 had actually shown Labour as being more than 20 points ahead of the Conservatives), but many opinion polls were actually showing the Conservatives with a higher amount of support than Labour, in spite of the deepening recession. Many years later, he returned to appear as a guest host of the programme. His ambition was noted by other MPs, and David Owen's opposition to the changes to the electoral college was thought to be motivated by the realisation that they would favour Kinnock's succession. Kinnock remained as education spokesman following the resignation of Callaghan as Leader of the Labour Party and the election of Michael Foot as his successor in late 1980. .css-2kny4l-ContributorLink{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;color:#B80000;}.css-2kny4l-ContributorLink:hover,.css-2kny4l-ContributorLink:focus{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}Martin RosenbaumFreedom of information specialist. The court actions came, and by the attitude to the court actions, the NUM leadership ensured that they would face crippling damages as a consequence. Shortly afterwards, he resigned as Leader of the Labour Party, being succeeded in the ensuing leadership election by John Smith. On a broader perspective, the traditional Labour voter was disappearing[citation needed] in the face of de-industrialisation that the Conservative government had accepted since 1979. 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