John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan

John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan (born 8 May 1947), is a British Labour Party politician. He was a Member of Parliament from 1987 to 2010, and served in the Cabinet under Prime Minister Tony Blair in a number of positions. He was Health Secretary from 2003 to 2005, Defence Secretary from 2005 to 2006, and Home Secretary from 2006 to 2007.

Born in Bellshill to working-class, Roman Catholic parents, Reid first became involved in politics when he joined the Young Communist League in 1972. He later joined the Labour Party, working for them as a senior researcher before being elected to the House of Commons in 1987 as the MP for Motherwell North.

He retired from frontline politics in 2007 following Gordon Brown's appointment as Prime Minister, taking on a role as the Chairman of Celtic Football Club. After stepping down as an MP in 2010, he was nominated for a life peerage in the Dissolution Honours and elevated to the House of Lords. Reid took a leading role in the campaign for a "No" vote in the 2011 AV referendum, appearing alongside Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, and also took a leading role in the campaign opposing Scottish independence.

Background

Reid was born in Bellshill Maternity Hospital, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, to working-class Roman Catholic parents; his grandparents were of mixed denomination. His grandfather was "a staunch Church of Scotland Presbyterian and his grandmother a poor and illiterate Irish peasant."John Reid: The Blairite bruiser
The Independent, 27 January 2001. His mother, Mary, was a factory worker and his father, Thomas, was a postman.

Reid attended St Patrick's Secondary School, Coatbridge. The adolescent Reid showed an early talent for organisation and political activism by leading a student strike in protest at a school rule. Reid initially decided not to go to university but instead took a series of jobs, including construction work on an oil pipeline and another in insurance;"John Reid, the Blairite bruiser all set to do battle"
''Irish Independent'', 27 January 2001. at the latter job, which Reid later claimed opened his eyes politically, he was assigned to the tenements in the East End of Glasgow after the city was hit by storms in late-1968 and saw poverty of a kind he did not know existed. Soon after this experience, he joined the Labour Party.

Around this time Reid's passion for history was kindled when his girlfriend (and later wife), Cathie McGowan, bought him a copy of ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'' by William L. Shirer. Reid was spellbound. Following this he attended the Open University in his mid-twenties to study a Foundation Course and then later attended the University of Stirling, becoming rector of the Students' Union and gaining a BA in history and a PhD in economic history, with a thesis on the slave trade written as a critique of the Marxist model of historical change, entitled ''Warrior Aristocrats in Crisis: the political effects of the transition from the slave trade to palm oil commerce in the nineteenth century Kingdom of Dahomey''.The Operator
The Guardian, 2 March 2002.

From 1979 to 1983, Reid was a research officer for the Labour Party in Scotland, and from 1983 to 1985, was a political adviser to Labour leader Neil Kinnock. From 1986 to 1987, he was Scottish Organiser of Trade Unionists for Labour. He entered parliament at the 1987 general election as MP for the Motherwell North constituency. After boundary changes, he was returned at the 1997 election for the new constituency of Hamilton North and Bellshill; and after further boundary changes in 2005, he was returned at the 2005 election for the new constituency of Airdrie and Shotts with 59% of the votes cast.

Reid was married to Cathie McGowan from 1969 until her sudden death from a heart attack in 1998. They had two sons, Kevin and Mark. In 2002, he married film director Carine Adler.

According to ''The Guardian'', in 1991, Reid arrived at the House of Commons "drunk one day and tried to force his way on to the floor to vote. When an attendant stepped forward to stop him, Reid threw a punch". Reid stopped drinking in 1994 and gave up his 60-a-day cigarette habit in 2003.

Political ideology

At university, Reid was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. With the support of Communist and Labour students, he became president of the students' union. After leaving university, he became a researcher for Scottish Labour. Reid believes that any socialist, or indeed any rational person, should be a revisionist on principle.

As an advisor to Neil Kinnock, Reid was one of the earliest advocates for reforms to the Labour Party. In 1983, after the Labour Party's worst electoral defeat in 65 years, and at Kinnock's request, he put on a single sheet of paper what he thought had made Labour unelectable: "Leaderless, unpatriotic, dominated by demagogues, policies fifteen years out of date". Elected to Parliament in 1987 as the Member of Parliament for Motherwell North, within two years he was appointed to the Shadow Front Bench as spokesperson for Children. In 1990, Reid was appointed as Defence spokesperson.

When the former Yugoslavia was breaking up in the 1990s, Reid was in dialogue with the Bosnian Serbs. During the Bosnian War, Reid struck up a friendship with Radovan Karadžić, later to be indicted as a war criminal. Reid admitted he spent three days at a luxury Geneva lakeside hotel as a guest of Karadžić in 1993.

Government career

Minister of State for the Armed Forces

After Labour came to power at the 1997 general election, Reid became Armed Forces Minister, where he played a key role in the Defence Secretary George Robertson's Strategic Defence Review. Reid gained considerable praise for the review; with some commentators going so far as to describe his success in cutting military expenditure at the same time as winning over the defence chiefs as "brilliant". As Minister he lobbied for the release of two Scots Guards convicted of murdering teenager Peter McBride in Belfast in 1992. At the same time he refused requests to meet the McBride family. Reid eventually met with the McBride family whilst he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Minister for Transport

In 1998, Reid moved from Defence to become Minister of State for Transport.The Guardian Profile: John Reid
The Guardian, 12 June 2003. Prime Minister Tony Blair then sent Reid to the Department of Transport to ensure the late-running and over-budget London Underground Jubilee Line Extension was completed by the end of 2000. He and John Prescott brought in Bechtel as Project Managers, ensuring Phase 1 was opened on 1 May 1999, and the whole Jubilee line with the exception of one station (Westminster) was ultimately open for business by the Millennium.Its New Transport Line Is Late and Over Budget : Will the New Century Get to London on Time?
New York Times, 11 February 1999. Reid demonstrated several aspects: he negotiated strongly; he was a political fighter; he had a "capacity for non-dogmatic adaptability and reliability";John Reid
BBC News, 17 October 2002. and was described as "a safe pair of hands".

Secretary of State for Scotland

Having impressed at both Transport and Defence Reid was promoted to Secretary of State for Scotland on 17 May 1999 and a full place at the cabinet table.

In his first month, the Scottish Parliament was re-established after an interval of 300 years. The reconstituted Scotland Office had been much reduced in importance with devolution but Reid used the position to build his profile, prepared to put the government's case on any issue against TV interviewers.After Donald ...
The Guardian, 12 October 2000.

After Donald Dewar, Scotland's respected First Minister, died in 2000 Reid's name was even mentioned as a possible replacement. In fact Reid was left to deal with much of the fall-out after the death and would be increasingly at loggerheads with the new Labour First Minister, Henry McLeish, whom Reid felt was taking the Parliament down a nationalist path. The situation became so strained between the two that in an unguarded moment McLeish publicly labelled Reid "a patronising bastard".

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

Reid became Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in January 2001 following the resignation of Peter Mandelson. He was the first Roman Catholic to hold the position.Profile: John Reid
BBC News, 6 May 2007. While dismissing the personal significance of this, he used it to insist that every person in Northern Ireland, from whatever background or tradition, wanted a prosperous future.

Throughout his period of office he was continually engaged in talks with all side of the community in an attempt to reduce the level of inter-community troubles. He blamed Paramilitaries from both sides of the community for on-going violence. He confronted both, on the ground, at a violent east Belfast interface, where he met loyalist residents of Cluan Place and then had talks with nationalist residents in the nearby Short Strand.

Reid ruled that ceasefires proclaimed by the Ulster Defence Association and the Loyalist Volunteer Force could no longer be recognised by the government because of their involvement in sectarian attacks and murders. At the same time he put pressure on the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) to make a move on arms decommissioning to help end the political impasse, whilst acknowledging that putting its weapons beyond use would be a difficult step to take.

It was in this context that, in October 2001 he welcomed a Gerry Adams speech as a "highly significant" step which he hoped would pave the way for a "groundbreaking" move by the IRA to disarm which would transform the political situation. And following the IRA's decision Reid responded by announcing the immediate demolition of British Army security bases and announcing a reduction in troop levels as the security situation improved, effectively beginning a process which culminated in September 2005, when the disarmament monitor for Northern Ireland, the Canadian General John de Chastelain announced that the IRA had given up its entire arsenal of weapons after more than three decades of armed struggle against British rule.

Reid oversaw the final stages of the transformation of the RUC into the Police Service Northern Ireland, and the first endorsement of the service by representatives of the Nationalist community.

Political problems continued, resulting in the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly a year later in October 2002. The peace process was to be put on hold until there was a "clear and unequivocal commitment" that the IRA would disband. Reid made an emergency statement to Parliament announcing direct rule in the interim.

In the interim, Reid also had to deal with continuing domestic problems; including those with loyalist ceasefires, sectarian murders and the tinderbox of Holy Cross primary school in north Belfast (that ignited the worst rioting in the city in years). But, so far as 10 Downing Street was concerned, Reid had gone a long way to delivering the rarest of political commodities – success in Northern Ireland.

Chairman of the Labour Party and Minister without Portfolio

Reid was appointed Chairman of the Labour Party and Minister Without Portfolio on 24 October 2002.

As a purely political post his trouble-shooting skills were employed as the Labour Government's chief spokesperson earning him the nickname "Minister for ''the Today Programme''".

One of Reid's key challenges was to keep the trade unions (the Labour Party's main funders) on-side despite the antipathy shown by the Unions to many of the Government's proposals. As part of this Reid agreed to look at proposals to stop private contractors exploiting low paid workers (a key Union demand).

Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council

In March 2003, Robin Cook resigned as Leader of the House of Commons due to his objections to the legality of Britain's involvement in the Iraq War. Reid was appointed to take over the Office brief on 4 April as a heavyweight figure was more likely to ensure the Commons' continued support for the war. He held the position for only just under three months and was succeeded by a more junior member of the Government, Peter Hain.

Secretary of State for Health

Reid was made Secretary of State for Health in June 2003, replacing Alan Milburn after the latter's resignation. He was reportedly less than happy with the appointment. He was reported by ''Private Eye'' at the time as reacting "Oh fuck, not health." But Reid had established himself as one of Tony Blair's most trusted ministers and his appointment as Health Secretary took him into his fourth cabinet job in less than a year.

At Health Reid saw himself as a reformer, controversially increasing capacity by introducing private companies to run treatment centres for knee, hip and eye operations. He claimed this provided extra staff and extra capacity to help treat more patients in the NHS at an unprecedented rate.

Reid also introduced plans to increase the number of smoke-free workplaces and improve diet and sexual health as part of a major drive to improve public health in England and began a major public consultation as a precursor to parliamentary proposals aimed at improving the nation's health. He also encouraged volunteer engagement in the health service.

Many of his changes caused criticism and controversy, which Reid was not afraid to take head on, delivering a staunch defence of Labour's reform programme to the party's annual conference. He made the case for extending to all the choices normally only available to those who could afford them. Reid's management style was considered autocratic by some and he came under considerable fire from National Health Service (NHS) leaders. He was criticized for giving GPs a 22% pay rise while also allowing them to opt out of providing weekend and evening treatment.

As Health Secretary, Reid had been in favour of limiting the government's proposed smoking ban as much as possible. In their 2005 election manifesto, he introduced a pledge to ban smoking in all places where food was served. His successor Patricia Hewitt favoured a complete ban. Reid won in the cabinet, gaining an exemption for private clubs and pubs that did not serve food. The House of Commons rebels proposing a complete ban were successful when MPs were given a free vote on the issue. Patricia Hewitt voted with the rebels against the Cabinet's proposals.

Secretary of State for Defence

Following the incumbent Labour Party's 2005 general election victory, Reid was appointed Secretary of State for Defence. He replaced Geoff Hoon.

At Defence, Reid questioned "the adequacy of the international legal framework in the light of modern developments in conflict". He suggested that "the body of relevant international rules and conventions should, where beneficial, be strengthened", especially "to cope with conflict against non-state actors such as the international terrorist… this means extending, not reducing, such conventions".

Reid committed 3,300 troops to Helmand province, Afghanistan in January 2006. Despite a lack of detailed intelligence, the Army anticipated the Helmand mission would be straightforward compared to its difficult mission in Basra it was withdrawing from, with short small patrols from fixed bases. In speaking to the media Reid said "We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot because our job is to protect the reconstruction." In the first year about 4 million bullets and 25,000 artillery rounds had been fired by the British armed forces.

Reid took an aggressive approach to defending his government's international policy. Speaking ahead of a conference on NATO modernisation in Germany on 4 February 2006, Reid asserted in a press interview that "no institution has the divine right to exist". Similarly on 19 March 2006, in response to former interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi's claim that Iraq is in the grip of civil war, Reid defended the British Government's contrary view. He stated: "Every single politician I have met here n_Iraq.html"_;"title="Iraq.html"_;"title="n_Iraq">n_Iraq">Iraq.html"_;"title="n_Iraq">n_n_Iraq.html"_;"title="Iraq.html"_;"title="n_Iraq">n_Iraq">Iraq.html"_;"title="n_Iraq">n_Iraqfrom_the_Prime_Minister_of_Iraq">prime_minister_

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