John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan
John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan is a British politician. A member of the Labour Party, he has held various Cabinet positions under Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1999 to 2007, lastly as Home Secretary from 2006 to 2007. He was also a Member of Parliament from 1987 to 2010, and has been a member of the House of Lords since 2010.
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 served as a junior minister in two departments from 1997, before he was promoted to the Cabinet in 1999; he served continuously in the Cabinet until Blair resigned in 2007. Reid served as Scottish Secretary from 1999 to 2001, Northern Ireland Secretary from 2001 to 2002, Chairman of the Labour Party and Minister without Portfolio from 2002 to 2003, Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council in 2003, Health Secretary from 2003 to 2005, Defence Secretary from 2005 to 2006, and Home Secretary from 2006 to 2007.
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 was an Irish Roman Catholic." His mother, Mary, was a factory worker and his father, Thomas, was a postman.Reid attended St Patrick's High 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; 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, 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 slavery in Africa written as a critique of the Marxist model of historical change, titled 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.
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 professional Labour Party activist, linked politically with Neil Kinnock.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. 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 was ultimately open for business by the Millennium. Reid demonstrated several aspects: he negotiated strongly; he was a political fighter; he had a "capacity for non-dogmatic adaptability and reliability"; 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 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. 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 the ongoing 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 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. 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.