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John Cummings (politician)
John Scott Cummings (6 July 1943 – 4 January 2017) was a British Labour politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Easington from 1987 until 2010. Early life Cummings was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, a fifth-generation coal miner. He was educated at the Murton Council Infant and Junior schools on Watt Street and Secondary school. He attended both the Easington Technical College and the Durham Technical College until 1962. He began his career with the National Coal Board as a miner in 1958, working as a pit electrician from 1967 until his election to the House of Commons twenty years later. He was elected as a councillor to the Easington District Council in 1970, was its chairman from 1975 to 1976, and was its leader from 1979 until he stepped down in 1987. Active on picket lines during the 1984–85 miners' strike, in which Easington was the location of several clashes with the police, Cummings later claimed his Jack Russell Terrier Grit had been trained to "ni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Dormand
John Donkin Dormand, Baron Dormand of Easington (27 August 1919 – 18 December 2003) was a British educationist and Labour Party politician from the coal mining area of Easington in County Durham, in the north-east of England. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for the Easington constituency from 1970 until his retirement in 1987. Described as an "old-style centre-right socialist", Dormand was a working-class child who progressed through grammar school education to study at Oxford and Harvard to a career as an educational administrator before entering Parliament at the age of 50, where he was noted as an advocate for education and for mining areas. He never achieved ministerial office, but as a skilled administrator he played a significant role as a government whip in the 1970s, and as Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party when the party was in opposition in the 1980s. An atheist and a staunch republican, he reluctantly accepted a life peerage when he retired from t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Russell Terrier
The Jack Russell Terrier is a small terrier that has its origins in fox hunting in England. It is principally white-bodied and smooth, rough or broken-coated and can be any colour. Small tan and white terriers that technically belong to other breeds are sometimes known erroneously as "Jack Russells". Each breed has different physical characteristics according to the standards of their national breed clubs; size and proportions are often used to tell them apart. Some authorities recognize a similar but separate breed as the Russell Terrier – a shorter-legged, stockier dog, with a range of . However, the ''Fédération Cynologique Internationale'' (FCI) regards the Russell terrier as a sub-type of Jack Russell terrier. Jack Russells are also frequently confused with the Parson Russell Terrier. Technically, the Parson Russell is usually larger and officially limited to a middle range, with a standard size of , whereas the Jack Russell is a broader type, with a size range of . ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Speaker Of The House Of Commons (United Kingdom)
The speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the House of Commons, the lower house and primary chamber of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The current speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, was elected Speaker on 4 November 2019, following the retirement of John Bercow. Hoyle began his first full parliamentary term in the role on 17 December 2019, having been unanimously re-elected after the 2019 general election. The speaker presides over the House's debates, determining which members may speak and which amendments are selected for consideration. The speaker is also responsible for maintaining order during debate, and may punish members who break the rules of the House. Speakers remain strictly non-partisan and renounce all affiliation with their former political parties when taking office and afterwards. The speaker does not take part in debate or vote (except to break ties; and even then, the convention is that the speaker casts the tie-breaking vote accor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1997 United Kingdom General Election
The 1997 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 1 May 1997. The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister John Major was defeated in a landslide by the Labour Party led by Tony Blair, achieving a 179 seat majority. The political backdrop of campaigning focused on public opinion towards a change in government. Blair, as Labour Leader, focused on transforming his party through a more centrist policy platform, entitled 'New Labour', with promises of devolution referendums for Scotland and Wales, fiscal responsibility, and a decision to nominate more female politicians for election through the use of all-women shortlists from which to choose candidates. Major sought to rebuild public trust in the Conservatives following a series of scandals, including the events of Black Wednesday in 1992, through campaigning on the strength of the economic recovery following the early 1990s recession, but faced divisions within the party over the UK's membership of the Eur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tony Blair
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of the Opposition from 1994 to 1997, and had served in various shadow cabinet posts from 1987 to 1994. Blair was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007. He is the second longest serving prime minister in modern history after Margaret Thatcher, and is the longest serving Labour politician to have held the office. Blair attended the independent school Fettes College, and studied law at St John's College, Oxford, where he became a barrister. He became involved in Labour politics and was elected to the House of Commons in 1983 for the Sedgefield constituency in County Durham. As a backbencher, Blair supported moving the party to the political centre of British politics. He was appointed to Neil Kinnock's shadow cabinet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whip (politics)
A whip is an official of a political party whose task is to ensure party discipline in a legislature. This means ensuring that members of the party vote according to the party platform, rather than according to their own individual ideology or the will of their donors or constituents. Whips are the party's "enforcers". They try to ensure that their fellow political party legislators attend voting sessions and vote according to their party's official policy. Members who vote against party policy may "lose the whip", being effectively expelled from the party. The term is taken from the "whipper-in" during a hunt, who tries to prevent hounds from wandering away from a hunting pack. Additionally, the term "whip" may mean the voting instructions issued to legislators, or the status of a certain legislator in their party's parliamentary grouping. Etymology The expression ''whip'' in its parliamentary context, derived from its origins in hunting terminology. The ''Oxford English ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Select Committee (United Kingdom)
In British politics, parliamentary select committees can be appointed from the House of Commons, like the Foreign Affairs Select Committee; from the House of Lords, like the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee; or as a joint committee of Parliament drawn from both, such as the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Committees may exist as "sessional" committees – i.e. be near-permanent – or as "ad-hoc" committees with a specific deadline by which to complete their work, after which they cease to exist, such as the Lords Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change. The Commons select committees are generally responsible for overseeing the work of government departments and agencies, whereas those of the Lords look at general issues, such as the constitution, considered by the Constitution Committee, or the economy, considered by the Economic Affairs Committee. Both houses have their own committees to review drafts of European Union directives: the Eur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secretary Of State For The Environment
The Secretary of State for the Environment was a UK cabinet position, responsible for the Department of the Environment (DoE). This was created by Edward Heath as a combination of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Public Building and Works on 15 October 1970. Thus it managed a mixed portfolio of issues: housing and planning, local government, public buildings, environmental protection and, initially, transport – James Callaghan gave transport its own department again in 1976. It has been asserted that during the Thatcher government the DoE led the drive towards centralism, and the undermining of local government.Peter Hennessy, ''Whitehall'' p.439 Particularly, the concept of 'inner cities policy', often involving centrally negotiated public-private partnerships and centrally appointed development corporations, which moved control of many urban areas to the centre, and away from their, often left-wing, local authoritie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Roth
Andrew Roth (23 April 1919 – 12 August 2010) was a biographer and journalist known for his compilation of ''Parliamentary Profiles'', a directory of biographies of British Members of Parliament, a small sample of which is available online in ''The Guardian''. Active amongst the politicians and journalists in Westminster for sixty years, he also made appearances on British television. He first gained prominence when arrested in 1945 as one of six suspects in the ''Amerasia'' spy case. He scoured ''Hansard'', gossip columns, vote papers and committee reports to compile his profiles of the personnel of the British Parliament and assessed their character traits, history, opinions and psychological drives. The profiles also included cartoon caricatures by his daughter, Terry Roth. Roth's detailed obituaries were composed for international and national figures of note, using the skills and information he had collected in his biographical research. A catalogue of his published ob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronnie Campbell
Ronald Campbell (born 14 August 1943) is a former British Labour Party politician who was Member of Parliament (MP) for Blyth Valley from 1987 until 2019. Early life Campbell was born in Tynemouth, and grew up with seven siblings. He attended Blyth Ridley County High School, a secondary modern, and left school at 14 to become a coal miner. Before entering parliament he was a councillor for Croft Ward, Blyth Borough, Northumberland from 1969 and a lay official of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). He was a miner from 1958–86. Campbell led picket lines in the 1984–85 miners' strike and was arrested twice. Parliamentary career Campbell was first elected as an MP for Blyth Valley at the 1987 general election with a majority of 853 votes. He often voted against the Blair government on issues such as the Iraq War. He is an outspoken socialist. When the government nationalised Northern Rock in 2008, Campbell declared it "the People's Bank" and opened an account. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Union Of Mineworkers (Great Britain)
The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is a trade union for coal miners in Great Britain, formed in 1945 from the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB). The NUM took part in three national miners' strikes, in UK miners' strike (1972), 1972, Three-Day Week, 1974 and UK miners' strike (1984–85), 1984–85. After the 1984–85 strike, and the subsequent closure of most of Britain's coal mines, it became a much smaller union. It had around 170,000 members when Arthur Scargill became leader in 1981, a figure which had fallen in 2015 to an active membership of around 100. Origins The Miners' Federation of Great Britain was established in Newport, Wales, Newport, Monmouthshire (historic), Monmouthshire in 1888 but did not function as a unified, centralised trade union for all miners. Instead the federation represented and co-ordinated the affairs of the existing local and regional miners' unions whose associations remained largely autonomous. The South Wales Miners' Federation, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trade Union
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits (such as holiday, health care, and retirement), improving working conditions, improving safety standards, establishing complaint procedures, developing rules governing status of employees (rules governing promotions, just-cause conditions for termination) and protecting the integrity of their trade through the increased bargaining power wielded by solidarity among workers. Trade unions typically fund their head office and legal team functions through regularly imposed fees called ''union dues''. The delegate staff of the trade union representation in the workforce are usually made up of workplace volunteers who are often appointed by members in democratic elections. The trade union, through an elected leadership and bargaining committee, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
