Michael Collins Welsh (23 November 1926 – 20 January 2012) was a

coal miner Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use c ...

and Labour Party politician from

South Yorkshire South Yorkshire is a ceremonial and metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of Doncaster and Sheffield as well as the boroughs of Barnsley and Rotherham. In N ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. He sat 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. ...

from 1979 to 1992. Welsh was educated at

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

s, at the

University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...

and at

Ruskin College Ruskin College, originally known as Ruskin Hall, Oxford, is an independent educational institution in Oxford, England. It is not a college of Oxford University. It is named after the essayist, art and social critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) an ...

in Oxford. He was a local councillor from 1962, and was elected at the 1979 general election as the

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 the Labour

safe seat A safe seat is an electoral district (constituency) in a legislative body (e.g. Congress, Parliament, City Council) which is regarded as fully secure, for either a certain political party, or the incumbent representative personally or a combinat ...

of Don Valley, sponsored by National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). In 1981, when the NUM in Yorkshire began to demand that its five sponsored MPs should support the unions' policies, Welsh was reported by ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' as the only one who was sufficiently

left-wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...

to retain the union's support. In the

1981 Labour Party deputy leadership election Events January * January 1 ** Greece enters the European Economic Community, predecessor of the European Union. ** Palau becomes a self-governing territory. * January 10 – Salvadoran Civil War: The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Fr ...

in 1981, Welsh voted for the left-wing candidate

Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British politician, writer and diarist who served as a Cabinet of the United Kingdom, Cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. ...

in both ballots. During the

Falklands War The Falklands War ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial de ...

in May 1982, Welsh was one of 69 MPs who signed an

Early Day Motion In the Westminster parliamentary system, an early day motion (EDM) is a Motion (parliamentary procedure), motion, expressed as a single sentence, Table (parliamentary procedure), tabled by Member of Parliament, members of Parliament that formally ...

calling for an immediate halt to hostilities. After boundary changes he was returned at the 1983 general election as MP for the new

Doncaster North Doncaster North is a constituency in South Yorkshire, England, represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2005 by Ed Miliband of the Labour Party. From 2010 until 2015, he was Leader of the Opposition before he lost the 20 ...

constituency. He was nominated in November that year to the

Foreign Affairs Select Committee The Foreign Affairs Select Committee is one of many select committees of the British House of Commons, which scrutinises the expenditure, administration and policy of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Inquiries The Foreign Affairs ...

, and in July 1985 he was one of four Labour MPs on the committee who rejected the committee's finding that there were military grounds for the sinking during the Falklands War of the Argentinian warship '' General Belgrano''. The four MPs (Welsh,

Dennis Canavan Dennis Andrew Canavan (born 8 August 1942) is a Scottish politician. He was the Member of Parliament for Falkirk West from 1974 to 2000 (known as West Stirlingshire from 1974 to 1983), first as a member of the Labour Party, and then as an In ...

Ian Mikardo Ian Mikardo (9 July 1908 – 6 May 1993), commonly known as Mik, was a British Labour Member of Parliament. An ardent socialist and a Zionist, he remained a backbencher throughout his four decades in the House of Commons. He was a member of Nati ...

and

Nigel Spearing Nigel John Spearing (8 October 1930 – 8 January 2017) was a British Labour Party politician. Nigel Spearing was born in Hammersmith, London, and educated at Latymer Upper School, Hammersmith and St Catharine's College, Cambridge. After grad ...

) published a minority report which accused the government of obstructing the committee by "suppression of evidence and giving of false evidence" and called for a further enquiry. He was re-elected in

1987 File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, k ...

, and retired from

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

at the 1992 general election. Welsh died at his home in

Carcroft Carcroft is a rural village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, the village is roughly six miles north-north west of Doncaster. At the time of t ...

Doncaster Doncaster (, ) is a city in South Yorkshire, England. Named after the River Don, it is the administrative centre of the larger City of Doncaster. It is the second largest settlement in South Yorkshire after Sheffield. Doncaster is situated in ...

in January 2012 aged 85.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Welsh, Michael Collins 1926 births 2012 deaths Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies National Union of Mineworkers-sponsored MPs UK MPs 1979–1983 UK MPs 1983–1987 UK MPs 1987–1992 British coal miners Alumni of the University of Sheffield Alumni of Ruskin College English miners