Jeffrey Thomas (politician)
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Jeffrey Thomas (12 November 1933 – 17 May 1989) was a British politician.


Early life

Thomas was educated at
Abertillery Abertillery (; cy, Abertyleri) is a town and a community of the Ebbw Fach valley in the historic county of Monmouthshire, Wales. Following local government reorganisation it became part of the Blaenau Gwent County Borough administrative area ...
Grammar School A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...
and King's College London, where he was president of the
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1955–56. He was a barrister, called to the bar by
Gray's Inn The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and W ...
in 1957, and was appointed
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.


Parliamentary career

After being defeated by 1,394 votes at Barry in 1966, Thomas was elected as a Labour
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 o ...
for
Abertillery Abertillery (; cy, Abertyleri) is a town and a community of the Ebbw Fach valley in the historic county of Monmouthshire, Wales. Following local government reorganisation it became part of the Blaenau Gwent County Borough administrative area ...
in
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 ...
. In December 1981, he was one of a number of Labour MPs who defected to the new
Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Fo ...
(SDP). His seat was abolished by boundary changes in 1983, and he stood that year in Cardiff West. He came third with 25.5% of the vote, which may have contributed to the victory of the Conservative
Stefan Terlezki Stefan Terlezki, (29 October 1927 – 21 February 2006) was a British Conservative politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Cardiff West from 1983 to 1987. Terlezki was born in Antonivka, a village near the town of Tlumach i ...
in a normally strong Labour seat. He rejoined the Labour party in 1986. He died in Pontypool, aged 55.


References


Sources

*''The Times Guide to the House of Commons'',
Times Newspapers Ltd News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group) is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher o ...
, 1983 * Thomas, Jeffrey) 1989 deaths Welsh Labour Party MPs Social Democratic Party (UK) MPs for Welsh constituencies UK MPs 1970–1974 UK MPs 1974 UK MPs 1974–1979 UK MPs 1979–1983 Alumni of King's College London Welsh King's Counsel 20th-century British lawyers Members of Gray's Inn {{Wales-Labour-UK-MP-stub