James Hood (16 May 1948 – 3 December 2017) was a Scottish Labour Party politician, who served as a Member of Parliament from

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 ...

until being defeated in

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the Apri ...

. He represented the

Clydesdale Clydesdale is an archaic name for Lanarkshire, a traditional county in Scotland. The name may also refer to: Sports * Clydesdale F.C., a former football club in Glasgow * Clydesdale RFC, Glasgow, a former rugby union club * Clydesdale RFC, South ...

constituency until 2005, and the

Lanark and Hamilton East Lanark and Hamilton East is a county constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which was first used at the 2005 general election. It covers parts of the former Clydesdale, Hamilton North and Bellshill and ...

constituency thereafter. Hood, a National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) trade union official during the miners' strike of 1984–85, remained a backbencher throughout his parliamentary career.

Early life

Jimmy Hood was born in

Lesmahagow Lesmahagow ( ; sco, Lismahagie or ''Lesmahagae'', gd, Lios MoChuda) is a small town in the historic county of Lanarkshire on the edge of moorland, near Lanark in the central belt of Scotland. Lesmahagow was also a civil parish. It lies west o ...

, Lanarkshire and was educated at the Lesmahagow Higher Grade School in

Coatbridge College New College Lanarkshire Coatbridge Campus, previously the independent Coatbridge College was Scotland’s oldest further education college, founded in 1865. The College has over 250 staff members and approximately 7,000 students. The College pr ...

, Motherwell Technical College and the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

. He worked with the

National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "v ...

(NCB) for 23 years, as a

mining engineer Mining in the engineering discipline is the extraction of minerals from underneath, open pit, above or on the ground. Mining engineering is associated with many other disciplines, such as mineral processing, exploration, excavation, geology, and ...

from 1964, the year he joined the NUM until 1987. He started his career with the NCB in the Lanarkshire Coalfield, at Auchlochan Colliery, moving to Nottinghamshire on the closure of the Lanarkshire coalfield in the summer of 1968 and became a NUM trade union official in 1973. During the Miners' Strike of 1984–5 he led the striking

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...

miners. From 1973 to 1987 he was a member of

Ollerton Ollerton is a town in the Newark and Sherwood District, Nottinghamshire, England, on the edge of Sherwood Forest in the area known as the Dukeries. It forms part of the civil parish of Ollerton and Boughton. OS Explorer Map 270: Sherwood Forest: ...

Parish Council. In 1979 he was elected as a councillor to the

Newark and Sherwood Newark and Sherwood is a local government district and is the largest district in Nottinghamshire, England. The district was formed on 1 April 1974, by a merger of the municipal borough of Newark with Newark Rural District and Southwell Rural ...

District Council and served until his election to

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Bu ...

Parliamentary career

He was elected to 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. ...

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 ...

for

at the 1987 general election, following the retirement of the sitting Labour MP

Judith Hart Constance Mary Hart, Baroness Hart of South Lanark, (née Ridehalgh; 18 September 19247 December 1991), known as Dame Judith Hart, was a British Labour Party politician. She served as a government minister during the 1960s and 1970s before ...

. Hood won the seat with a majority of 10,502 votes. His

-based seat was abolished as part of boundary changes directly before the 2005 general election. Hood then stood for the newly created seat and was elected as MP for

. He represented the seat until his defeat at the 2015 general election to the

Scottish National Party The Scottish National Party (SNP; sco, Scots National Pairty, gd, Pàrtaidh Nàiseanta na h-Alba ) is a Scottish nationalist and social democratic political party in Scotland. The SNP supports and campaigns for Scottish independence from ...

candidate,

Angela Crawley Angela Crawley (born 3 June 1987) is a Scottish National Party politician. She was first elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lanark and Hamilton East at the 2015 general election. Crawley has served as the SNP Shadow Attorney General ...

. In Parliament, he joined the left-wing

Campaign group The Socialist Campaign Group, officially the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs and also known as the Campaign Group, is a left-wing, democratic socialist grouping of the Labour Party's Members of Parliament in the House of Commons of the ...

and initially refused to pay the poll tax. In 1998, he called for the abolition of the system of parliamentary

whips A whip is a tool or weapon designed to strike humans or other animals to exert control through pain compliance or fear of pain. They can also be used without inflicting pain, for audiovisual cues, such as in equestrianism. They are generally ...

in a debate on workplace bullying, arguing that workplace abuses existed in Parliament "where careers are controlled by the carrot and stick of political patronage" and suggesting that "career assassination" was commonplace. Despite his credentials as a left-wing firebrand, he subsequently came to be regarded as a relatively loyal supporter of

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 '

New Labour New Labour was a period in the history of the British Labour Party from the mid to late 1990s until 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The name dates from a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen ...

'. He voted against the first

Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...

, and was one of many Labour rebels that voted against the

invasion of Iraq The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Ba'athist Iraq, 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 mont ...

in 2003 In Parliament, he served as the Chairman of the

European legislation A directive is a legal act of the European Union that requires member states to achieve a particular result without dictating the means of achieving that result. Directives first have to be enacted into national law by member states before thei ...

select committee from 1992 to 2006, having been a member from 1987. He was also member of the Liaison Committee from 1992 to 2006 and on the Defence Select Committee between 1997 and 2001. He was a Member of the Speaker's panel of Chairmen from 1997. In November 2008, Hood was one of 18 MPs who signed a Commons motion backing a

Team GB Team GB is the brand name used since 1999 by the British Olympic Association (BOA) for their British Olympic team. The brand was developed after the nation's poor performance in the 1996 Summer Olympics, and is now a trademark of the BOA. I ...

football team at the 2012 Olympic Games, saying football "should not be any different from other competing sports and our young talent should be allowed to show their skills on the world stage". The football governing bodies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all opposed to a Great Britain team, fearing it would stop them competing as individual nations in future tournaments. In February 2014, Hood outlined his opposition to Scottish independence in a commons debate, stating "Even if the SNP was right and there was a grand, great thing at the end of the rainbow for the SNP and its debate for independence, I would still be against it. If the Scottish people are going to be better off economically and so on, I would still be against breaking away from the Union". In October 2014, Hood invoked

parliamentary privilege Parliamentary privilege is a legal immunity enjoyed by members of certain legislatures, in which legislators are granted protection against civil or criminal liability for actions done or statements made in the course of their legislative duties. ...

to link former Home Secretary

Leon Brittan Leon Brittan, Baron Brittan of Spennithorne, (25 September 193921 January 2015) was a British Conservative politician and barrister who served as a European Commissioner from 1989 to 1999. As a member of Parliament from 1974 to 1988, he serv ...

to accusations of improper conduct with children. He added that "I am just repeating what I read in the papers". On 7 May 2015, Hood was unseated by the

candidate

, a

South Lanarkshire Council South Lanarkshire Council ( gd, Comhairle Siorrachd Lannraig a Deas) is the unitary authority serving the South Lanarkshire council area in Scotland. The council has its headquarters in Hamilton, has 16,000 employees, and a budget of almost £1b ...

councillor. Crawley overturned Hood's previous majority of 13,478 votes to command a 10,100 majority for the SNP.

Expenses

During the

MPs expenses scandal The United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal was a major political scandal that emerged in 2009, concerning expenses claims made by members of the British Parliament in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords over the previous year ...

, it was reported that Hood had claimed £1,000 per month in second home expenses without claiming receipts, which was up to the permissible limits in place at the time. Hood said his second London home was necessary because of the distance of Westminster from Lanarkshire, and he accepted it would not be possible to make claims of that size in future without receipts and he "fully supported" putting details of expenses online.

Personal life

He married Marion McCleary in 1967; the couple had a son and a daughter and five grandchildren. He suffered a heart attack in 1998. Hood died of a second heart attack on 3 December 2017, aged 69.

References

External links

constituency website
in use while Hood was an MP {{DEFAULTSORT:Hood, Jimmy 1948 births 2017 deaths People from Lesmahagow Alumni of the University of Nottingham National Union of Mineworkers-sponsored MPs UK MPs 1987–1992 UK MPs 1992–1997 UK MPs 1997–2001 UK MPs 2001–2005 UK MPs 2005–2010 UK MPs 2010–2015 Scottish trade unionists British mining engineers Scottish Labour MPs Scottish engineers People from Ollerton