David Julian Winnick (born 26 June 1933) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for

Walsall North Walsall North is a constituency created in 1955 represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2017 by Eddie Hughes, a member of the Conservative Party. The local electorate returned a Labour MP in the seat's first seventeen g ...

between

1979 Events January * January 1 ** United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim heralds the start of the '' International Year of the Child''. Many musicians donate to the '' Music for UNICEF Concert'' fund, among them ABBA, who write the so ...

and

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...

, he was also the MP for Croydon South from

1966 Events January * January 1 – In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa takes over as military ruler of the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko. * January 3 – 1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état: President Maurice Yaméogo ...

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and ...

Early life

Born into a

British Jewish British Jews (often referred to collectively as British Jewry or Anglo-Jewry) are British citizens who identify as Jewish. The number of people who identified as Jews in the United Kingdom rose by just under 4% between 2001 and 2021. History ...

family, Winnick was an advertising manager and a branch chairman of the

Clerical and Administrative Workers Union The Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff (APEX) was a British trade union which represented clerical and administrative employees. History The Clerks Union was formed in 1890 and later was renamed as the Nationa ...

. He was a councillor from 1959 on

Willesden Willesden () is an area of northwest London, situated 5 miles (8 km) northwest of Charing Cross. It is historically a parish in the county of Middlesex that was incorporated as the Municipal Borough of Willesden in 1933, and has forme ...

Borough Council, then on the

London Borough of Brent The London Borough of Brent () is a London borough in north-west London. It borders the boroughs of Harrow to the north-west, Barnet to the north-east, Camden to the east, the City of Westminster to the south-east, as well as the Royal Borou ...

Parliamentary career

After unsuccessfully fighting

Harwich Harwich is a town in Essex, England, and one of the Haven ports on the North Sea coast. It is in the Tendring District, Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the north-east, Ipswich to the north-west, Colchester to the south-w ...

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarc ...

, Winnick was elected in

as the MP for Croydon South (now the area covered roughly by Croydon Central constituency), defeating incumbent Richard Thompson. He lost the seat to Thompson in

. After completing a diploma in social administration at the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 milli ...

, he stood again unsuccessfully in Croydon Central in October 1974 and was returned for Walsall North in

. Winnick is generally regarded as being on the

left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album '' Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relative direction opposite of right * ...

of the Labour Party and has a strong commitment to human rights. That commitment made him a strong voice in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

against both the

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

and

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...

and he supported the

2003 invasion of Iraq The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including ...

. 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

by 323 votes to 290, shortly after the government's 90-day proposal was defeated by 322 to 291. This was

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 th ...

's first defeat in the House of Commons on a whipped vote, after serving nearly nine years as

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

, 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. Winnick played a prominent role in the campaign to force the resignation of the

Speaker of the House of Commons Speaker of the House of Commons is a political leadership position found in countries that have a House of Commons, where the membership of the body elects a speaker to lead its proceedings. Systems that have such a position include: * Speaker of ...

, Michael Martin. This followed controversy from May 2009 concerning MPs' disclosure of expenses. At the 2010 general election, Walsall North was one of the most closely contested seats at the election, with Winnick being re-elected with a significantly reduced majority of 990 votes, compared to 6,640 votes at the previous election five years earlier. In 2015, however, Winnick gained a comfortable majority of 1,937, despite the Labour Party incurring a net loss of seats. In his victory speech, he criticised the way in which his Conservative opponent had conducted their election campaign. In

(again against the national trend) he was defeated by Conservative Party candidate Eddie Hughes by 2,601 votes.

References

External links

David Winnick
official site

* ttps://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/david_winnick/walsall_north TheyWorkForYou.com – David Winnick MP*
The Public Whip – David Winnick MP
voting record
Public Whip – Commons vote on Winnick's amendment to Terrorism Bill Clause 23, 9 November 2005
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Winnick, David 1933 births Living people Alumni of the London School of Economics English Jews Jewish British politicians Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Politics of the London Borough of Croydon Councillors in Greater London Councillors in the London Borough of Brent UK MPs 1966–1970 UK MPs 1979–1983 UK MPs 1983–1987 UK MPs 1987–1992 UK MPs 1992–1997 UK MPs 1997–2001 UK MPs 2001–2005 UK MPs 2005–2010 UK MPs 2010–2015 UK MPs 2015–2017