Sydney James Bidwell (14 January 1917 – 25 May 1997) was a British

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 ...

politician. Bidwell was a railway worker on the Great Western Railway and became a tutor and organiser for the National Council of Labour Colleges. He went on to become the London Regional Education Officer for the TUC. Having joined the Labour Party in his youth, in the 1940s he was also a member of the

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...

Revolutionary Communist Party.Sid Bidwell,
National Council of Labour Colleges
, ''International Socialism'' No.12 (1963) He was a councillor on Southall Borough Council 1951–55. Bidwell contested

East Hertfordshire East Hertfordshire is a local government district in Hertfordshire, England. Its council is based in Hertford, the county town of Hertfordshire. The largest town in the district is Bishop's Stortford, and the other main towns are Ware, Bunti ...

1959 Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...

and South West Hertfordshire in

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarc ...

. He was elected as

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 ...

(MP) for

Southall Southall () is a large suburban county of West London, England, part of the London Borough of Ealing and is one of its seven major towns. It is situated west of Charing Cross and had a population of 69,857 as of 2011. It is generally divided ...

at the 1966 general election, and was elected for the largely similar seat of

Ealing Southall Ealing, Southall (also Ealing Southall) is a constituency created in 1974 and represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2007 by Virendra Sharma of the Labour Party. Constituency profile The constituency has relatively go ...

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning ...

. Whilst in Parliament, he saw through a bill to exclude Sikhs from being forced to wear crash helmets on motorbikes. Before the 1992 general election, Bidwell was de-selected as a candidate at the age of 75. When his appeal to the Labour

National Executive Committee National Executive Committee is the name of a leadership body in several organizations, mostly political parties: * National Executive Committee of the African National Congress, in South Africa * Australian Labor Party National Executive * Nationa ...

failed, he decided to stand as a "True Labour" candidate, but finished third behind the official Labour candidate

Piara Khabra Piara Singh Khabra (Hindi: प्यारा सिंह खाबड़ा, Punjabi: ; 20 November 1921 – 19 June 2007) was a British-Indian Labour politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Ealing Southall from 1992 until h ...

, with 9% of the vote.

References

Sources

*
Sydney Bidwell's parliamentary record: from 'Hansard
*
Account of Bidwell's victory on turban-wearing

External links

* 1917 births 1997 deaths Independent politicians in England Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Councillors in Greater London Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1944) members UK MPs 1966–1970 UK MPs 1970–1974 UK MPs 1974 UK MPs 1974–1979 UK MPs 1979–1983 UK MPs 1983–1987 UK MPs 1987–1992 People from Southall {{England-Labour-UK-MP-stub