Harold Daniel Hope Elletson (8 December 1960 – 23 June 2023) was a British politician. Elletson unsuccessfully contested

Burnley Burnley () is a town and the administrative centre of the wider Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, with a 2001 population of 73,021. It is north of Manchester and east of Preston, at the confluence of the River Calder and River Bru ...

for the

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

in the 1987 general election, before becoming

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MP) for Blackpool North in

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...

. However, in his

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

bid for re-election in the new Blackpool North and Fleetwood constituency, he lost to

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

Joan Humble Joan Humble (born Jovanka Piplica; 3 March 1951) is a British people, British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (UK Parliam ...

by 8,946 votes. On 22 December 1996, ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' newspaper claimed Elletson moonlighted as an

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

agent: the headline read "Pro-Serb Tory MP was MI6 Agent". The newspaper said he was recruited before he entered 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. ...

, working for the intelligence agency in Eastern Europe, the former

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and during the conflict in the former

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

: Elletson joined the Liberal Democrats in 2002. On 30 September 2014, as chairman of The Campaign for the North, he launched an all-party pressure group to re-create the ancient

Kingdom of Northumbria la, Regnum Northanhymbrorum , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Northumbria , common_name = Northumbria , status = State , status_text = Unified Anglian kingdom (before 876)North: Anglian kingdom (af ...

as a federal state in a new United Kingdom. The Campaign seeks 'devo-max' power from Westminster to bring the traditional counties of

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land on ...

Durham Durham most commonly refers to: *Durham, England, a cathedral city and the county town of County Durham *County Durham, an English county * Durham County, North Carolina, a county in North Carolina, United States *Durham, North Carolina, a city in N ...

, Yorkshire,

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

Westmorland Westmorland (, formerly also spelt ''Westmoreland'';R. Wilkinson The British Isles, Sheet The British IslesVision of Britain/ref> is a historic county in North West England spanning the southern Lake District and the northern Dales. It had an ...

and

Cumberland Cumberland ( ) is a historic county in the far North West England. It covers part of the Lake District as well as the north Pennines and Solway Firth coast. Cumberland had an administrative function from the 12th century until 1974. From 19 ...

into a democratic state with powers equal to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or London, retaining membership of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

. The proposed Northumbria would cover the territory that was ruled a thousand years ago by the Norseman

Erik Bloodaxe Eric Haraldsson ( non, Eiríkr Haraldsson , no, Eirik Haraldsson; died 954), nicknamed Bloodaxe ( non, blóðøx , no, Blodøks) and Brother-Slayer ( la, fratrum interfector), was a 10th-century Norwegian king. He ruled as King of Norway from ...

, the last 'king of the North', killed in battle at

Stainmore Stainmore is a remote geographic area in the Pennines on the border of Cumbria, County Durham and North Yorkshire. The name is used for a civil parish in the Eden District of Cumbria, England, including the villages of North Stainmore and South ...

in the

Pennines The Pennines (), also known as the Pennine Chain or Pennine Hills, are a range of uplands running between three regions of Northern England: North West England on the west, North East England and Yorkshire and the Humber on the east. Commo ...

in 954. In 2015, he co-founded the

Northern Party The Northern Party was a regionalist political party in Northern England, founded by leader Michael Dawson and former Blackpool MP Harold Elletson in March 2015 to contest five marginal seats in Lancashire at the 2015 general election. The ...

to campaign for better representation for

Northern England Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik, and the ...

. At the 2015 general election, he contested the constituency of

Lancaster and Fleetwood Lancaster and Fleetwood is a constituency created in 2010 represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament by Cat Smith of the Labour Party. History ;Creation Following their review of parliamentary representation in Lancashire, the B ...

, coming last with 0.4% of the vote. At the 2019 general election, he endorsed the incumbent Labour MP,

Cat Smith Catherine Jane Smith (born 16 June 1985) is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Lancaster and Fleetwood since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, she was a member of the shadow cabinets of Jeremy Corbyn and Ke ...

. Elletson died from a

pulmonary embolism Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a blockage of an pulmonary artery, artery in the lungs by a substance that has moved from elsewhere in the body through the bloodstream (embolism). Symptoms of a PE may include dyspnea, shortness of breath, chest pain p ...

in Germany on 23 June 2023, at the age of 62.

References

External links

* 1960 births 2023 deaths Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1992–1997 Secret Intelligence Service personnel Liberal Democrats (UK) politicians British political party founders {{England-Conservative-UK-MP-1960s-stub