Denis MacShane
Denis MacShane is a British former politician, author, commentator and convicted criminal who served as Minister of State for Europe from 2002 to 2005. He joined the Labour Party in 1970 and has held most party offices. He was Member of Parliament for Rotherham from 1994 to his forced resignation in 2012.
Born in Glasgow to an Irish mother and Polish father who died from war-related illness in 1958, MacShane was educated on a Middlesex County scholarship at St Benedict's School, Ealing and studied at Merton College, Oxford. He worked as a BBC journalist and trade unionist before completing a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London. He contested the Solihull constituency in October 1974 but was unsuccessful. After failing to be selected to contest a constituency at the 1992 general election, he was elected to parliament for Rotherham at a 1994 by-election. Following the 2001 general election, he was appointed a junior minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In April 2002, he became Minister of State for Europe and was appointed to the Privy Council. He returned to the backbenches following the 2005 general election.
In November 2012, Labour suspended MacShane when the Standards and Privileges Committee found he had submitted 19 false invoices "plainly intended to deceive" the parliamentary expenses authority. The allegations had been investigated for 20 months by the Metropolitan Police. After the Commons upheld the complaint, he announced his intention to resign as MP for Rotherham and from the Privy Council. In November 2013, he pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to false accounting by submitting false receipts for £12,900. On 23 December, he was sentenced to six months in prison. He served four months of his sentence in HM Prison Belmarsh and HM Prison Brixton, and the rest by wearing an electronic tag.
Early life and career
MacShane was born on 21 May 1948 in Glasgow as Josef Denis Matyjaszek to an Irish mother, Isobel MacShane, and Jozef Matyjaszek, a Pole who had fought in the Second World War and remained in exile, taking British nationality in 1950. He was educated at the independent St Benedict's School in Ealing, before going on to study at Merton College, Oxford.MacShane worked for the BBC from 1969 to 1977, including as a newsreader and reporter on Wolverhampton Wanderers for BBC Radio Birmingham. He changed his surname to his mother's maiden name at the request of his employers. He was fired by the BBC after using a fake name to call the radio phone-in programme he worked on at the time. During the call, MacShane accused leading Conservative politician Reginald Maudling, who had been forced to resign as a frontbencher after accusations of financial impropriety in 1972, of being a crook. The MP threatened to sue as a result.
MacShane supported the Solidarity trade union in Poland, where he was arrested in 1982 for attending a demonstration and deported. He became an activist for the National Union of Journalists and later its president 1978 to 1979. He was policy director of the International Metal Workers' Federation from 1980 to 1992, and he completed a PhD in international economics at Birkbeck, University of London in 1990.
Political career
MacShane first contested a parliamentary seat at the October 1974 general election, where he failed to win Solihull. In 1984, he was on the short list for Labour Party Communications Director, but Peter Mandelson was appointed instead. For the 1992 general election, he attempted to secure a nomination for the Coventry South East constituency, then Neath, and finally Rotherham, though all the attempts were unsuccessful.MacShane was elected to the House of Commons in the 1994 Rotherham by-election. He was a member of the Deregulation Select Committee 1996–1997, and served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to a succession of ministers in the 1997–2001 Parliament.
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office
Following the 2001 general election, MacShane was appointed Parliamentary under-secretary of state for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on 11 June 2001, with responsibility for the Balkans and Latin America. He caused some embarrassment to the government in 2002 by describing President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela as a 'ranting, populist demagogue' and compared him to Benito Mussolini during a failed military coup attempt to depose the democratically elected president. Afterwards, he had to make clear that, as minister with responsibility for Latin America, the government deplored the coup attempt.In November 2001, an article supportive of the war in Afghanistan was published in The Observer under the name of Muslim Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, headlined "The Five Myths Muslims Must Deny". A few days later however, it was revealed that the article had not in fact been written by Mahmood, but by MacShane; Mahmood had agreed to put his name to the article after Lord Ahmed of Rotherham had refused. Mahmood's actions were condemned by Inayat Bunglawala from the Muslim Council of Britain, who said that " Lord Ahmed refused, MacShane then found Mahmood—universally regarded as being not exactly the brightest spark in parliament—to be a more willing instrument for his scheme".
Minister for Europe
In 2002, he became Minister for Europe in the reshuffle caused by the resignation of Estelle Morris. He was appointed a member of the Privy Council in 2005.MacShane was a supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and strongly supported Tony Blair's foreign policy, including in relation to the Middle East. Later in 2003, he criticised Muslim community leaders, saying they did not do enough to condemn acts of Islamic terrorism.
During a meeting of Durham Labour Students in 2004, MacShane described Gordon Brown's five economic tests for joining the European single currency as, "a bit of a giant red herring." When contacted by The Scotsman newspaper about whether or not he made the comments, he responded: "Jesus Christ, no. I mean, 'red herring' is not one of my favourite metaphors. If you think any Labour MP saying the Prime Minister's most important policy is a red herring, then they would not survive long in the job." He had been recorded on a dictaphone, and the tape was played on both the Today programme and BBC News 24.
In March 2005, MacShane signed on to the Henry Jackson Society principles, advocating a proactive approach to the spread of liberal democracy across the world, including by military intervention. The society also supports "European military modernisation and integration under British leadership".
Following the 2005 general election, MacShane was dropped from the government. After returning to the backbenches in 2005, he was appointed as a delegate to the Council of Europe and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. MacShane wrote in Tribune magazine in 2006, "I have no idea why I was removed as a minister, and it does not worry me in the slightest."
Other issues and incidents
While MacShane has campaigned on the issue of sex trafficking, he was accused of repeatedly using false statistics in order to inflate the number of female victims. In January 2007, he stated, "According to Home Office estimates, 25,000 sex slaves currently work in the massage parlours and brothels of Britain." He repeated the figure in a 2008 debate, attributing it to the Daily Mirror newspaper. It was later claimed that no such figure exists as an estimate.On 17 December 2008, he initiated a debate about Britain's libel laws in Parliament. Specifically, he described how the United Kingdom has become a destination for libel tourists as well as how various jurisdictions in the United States were ready to pass measures designed to halt, at the minimum, reciprocal enforcement of civil judgments related to libel with the United Kingdom, and quite possibly, to allow countersuit, and the award of treble damages in the United States against any person bringing a libel action in a non-US court against US publications or websites.
On 25 August 2010, The Guardian reported that MacShane admitted he was the MP involved in an incident with a volunteer with the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority: "On 11 May a volunteer had an encounter with an MP who was described as 'very difficult... disruptive angry" during an induction session. The official report said: 'At the 10-minute mark the volunteer burst into tears and a staff member attempted to intervene. When the staff member offered to help, the MP dismissed him as 'condescending', at which point another staff member pulled the volunteer out of the session.' MacShane apologised for his conduct.
MacShane was publicly criticised by the Association of Political Thought for wrongly accusing London School of Economics professor of political and gender theory Anne Phillips of supporting prostitution and filling the minds of her students with "poisonous drivel". As evidence of her supposed support for the latter, he cited a question from an LSE reading list about the ethical differences between legal waged labour and prostitution. MacShane later admitted that he had taken the question 'out of context'. Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart subsequently called Professor Phillips' views "frankly nauseating" on the basis of the same evidence.
MacShane was a Patron of Supporters of Nuclear Energy, and supported the development of a nuclear industry manufacturing centre in Rotherham. MacShane was employed as an advisor by United Utilities, Britain's largest water company, during 2006 and 2007.
MacShane was MP for Rotherham during the period of large-scale sexual abuse of children in the constituency. After the publication of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham he said in a BBC radio interview that no-one had come to him with child abuse allegations during that period, but that he should have been more involved in the issue. Saying that he had done too little, he said he had been aware of what he saw as the problems of cousin marriage and the oppression of women within parts of the Muslim community in Britain, but: "Perhaps yes, as a true Guardian reader, and liberal leftie, I suppose I didn't want to raise that too hard. I think there was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat if I may put it like that."
Another issue on which MacShane was active as a parliamentarian was combating antisemitism. He was chair of the inquiry panel of the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, which reported in September 2006. In March 2009, he became chairman of a think-tank on antisemitism, the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.
MacShane was an advisory board member of the now defunct Just Journalism, an organisation focused on how UK media reported Israel and the Middle East. Just Journalism had strong links with the Henry Jackson Society, and shared an office with it.