Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock is a Welsh politician who was Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the British Labour Party from 1983 to 1992. He was a Member of Parliament from 1970 to 1995, first for Bedwellty and then for Islwyn. He was Vice-President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. Kinnock was positioned on the soft left of the Labour Party.
Born and raised in South Wales, Kinnock was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1970 general election. He became the Labour Party's shadow education minister after the Conservatives won power in the 1979 general election. After the party under Michael Foot suffered a landslide defeat to Margaret Thatcher in the 1983 election, Kinnock was elected Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition. During his tenure as leader, Kinnock proceeded to fight the party's left wing, especially the Militant tendency, and he opposed NUM leader Arthur Scargill's methods in the 1984–1985 miners' strike. He led the party during most of the Thatcher government, which included its third successive election defeat when Thatcher won the 1987 general election. Although Thatcher had won another landslide, Labour regained sufficient seats for Kinnock to remain Leader of the Opposition following the election.
Kinnock led the Labour Party to a surprise fourth consecutive defeat at the 1992 general election, despite the party being ahead of John Major's Conservative government in most opinion polls, which had predicted either a narrow Labour victory or a hung parliament. Shortly afterwards, he resigned as Leader of the Labour Party; he was succeeded in the ensuing leadership election by John Smith. He left the House of Commons in 1995 to become a European commissioner. He went on to become Vice-President of the European Commission under Romano Prodi from 1999 to 2004, before being elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Kinnock in 2005. Until the summer of 2009, he was also the chairman of the British Council and the president of Cardiff University.
Early life
Kinnock, an only child, was born in Tredegar, Wales on Saturday, 28 March 1942. His father, Gordon Herbert Kinnock, was a former coal miner who later worked as a labourer, whilst his mother, Mary Kinnock, was a district nurse. The family lived in a terraced house in the mining town, where Kinnock grew up surrounded by the close-knit community typical of the South Wales Valleys. Gordon died of a heart attack in November 1971 at the age of 64, and Mary died the following month at 61.In 1953, aged eleven, Kinnock began his secondary education at Lewis School, Pengam, once described by David Lloyd George as ‘the Eton of the Valleys’, but an institution Kinnock later criticised for its record on corporal punishment. The school was a direct grant grammar school that served pupils from across the Rhymney Valley and Monmouthshire, and Kinnock performed well academically, particularly in history and English. He went on to the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff, where he graduated in 1965 with a degree in Industrial Relations and History. The following year, Kinnock obtained a postgraduate diploma in education. From August 1966 to May 1970, he worked as a tutor for a Workers' Educational Association.
At university, Kinnock was active in student politics and became involved with the Labour Party. He also participated in Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament activities and anti-apartheid protests. During his time at Cardiff, he met Glenys Parry, a fellow student studying education. Kinnock later recalled that his work with the WEA exposed him to the concerns of working-class communities across South Wales and helped develop his skills as a public speaker.
He married Glenys Kinnock on 25 March 1967. They have two children – son Stephen Kinnock, and daughter Rachel Nerys Helen Kinnock.
Member of Parliament
Early parliamentary career (1970–1979)
In June 1969, Kinnock secured the Labour Party nomination for the Bedwellty constituency in South Wales, narrowly defeating an endorsed candidate of the National Union of Mineworkers who was twice his age. The constituency was later redesignated as Islwyn before the 1983 general election. He was first elected to the House of Commons on 18 June 1970 with a majority of 22,000 votes, and held the seat by massive majorities throughout his parliamentary career. Upon his election as an MP, his father advised him: "Remember Neil, MP stands not just for Member of Parliament, but also for Man of Principle."On entering Parliament, Kinnock immediately aligned himself with the left wing of the parliamentary Labour Party, joining the Tribune Group. His maiden speech was an abrasive attack on the Conservative government during a debate on the National Health Service. In his first address to the Commons, he announced to the assembled MPs: "I am the first male member of my family for about three generations who can have reasonable confidence in expecting that I will leave this earth with more or less the same number of fingers, hands, legs, toes and eyes as I had when I was born."
During the 1970–1974 parliament, he spoke frequently in debates and conscientiously attended to the needs of his Bedwellty constituents. However, his parliamentary performance would later become controversial. Thereafter, his attendance in Parliament dropped off significantly; and by the early 1980s he had one of the ten worst attendance records of all contemporary MPs. This poor attendance record reflected his increasing focus on national political activities and media appearances rather than routine parliamentary business.
Kinnock's political views during the 1970s were characterised by firmly left-wing positions typical of the Tribune Group within the Labour Party. By 1974, he was described as a vocal advocate of the standard left-wing position on nuclear weapons, the Common Market, public ownership, incomes policy, and arms embargoes to South Africa, Chile, and El Salvador. During the 1970s, Kinnock was a fierce critic of the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. He rejected offers of ministerial positions on ideological grounds, with one Conservative newspaper labelling him a "left wing fanatic" in 1978. In December 1974, he wrote an article on nationalisation in Labour Monthly, delivering a bitter criticism of the capitalist system.
From 1974 to 1975, Kinnock served as parliamentary private secretary to Michael Foot, who was then Secretary of State for Employment. This position gave him valuable experience of government operations and brought him into close contact with one of Labour's most prominent left-wing figures. Although he served briefly as Michael Foot's parliamentary private secretary, he turned down offers of ministerial positions in the Wilson and Callaghan governments, preferring to maintain his independence on the backbenches.
During this period, Kinnock wrote two books that reflected his political thinking: Wales and the Common Market and As Nye Said. The latter was a collection of speeches and writings by Aneurin Bevan, the Welsh Labour politician and health secretary during the government of prime minister Clement Attlee who had been Tredegar's MP before Kinnock.
In the 1975 referendum on Britain's membership of the European Communities, Kinnock campaigned for Britain to leave the Common Market. He led the Welsh opposition to legislation providing for limited self-government for Wales, arguing that the misfortunes of Welsh working people could best be redressed "in a single nation and in a single economic unit". His stance was vindicated when Welsh voters overwhelmingly rejected the devolution proposals in the 1979 Welsh devolution referendum.
In the years from 1974 to 1979, Kinnock had gained a national following among the left wing of the Labour Party and in the country at large. He appeared frequently on television and spoke at many local Labour Party and trade union meetings. His reputation as a gifted orator grew during this period, and he became one of the most recognisable faces of Labour's left wing.
The SDP breakaway and Labour's internal crisis (1980–1983)
The late 1970s and early 1980s marked a period of profound crisis for the Labour Party that would fundamentally shape Kinnock's political trajectory. Following Labour's defeat at the 1979 general election, the party moved decisively to the left under new leader Michael Foot, adopting policies including unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the European Economic Community. These leftward shifts, combined with organisational changes that increased the power of trade unions and constituency activists in selecting the party leader through a new electoral college system, alarmed many on the party's right wing.The breaking point came in January 1981 with the Limehouse Declaration, when four former Labour Cabinet ministers—Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers, and Shirley Williams—announced their intention to form the Social Democratic Party. In total, 28 Labour MPs would eventually defect to the new party, representing the most significant parliamentary split in British politics since the war. The SDP quickly formed an electoral alliance with the Liberal Party, creating a formidable centrist challenge that threatened to displace Labour as the main opposition to the Conservatives.
Kinnock found himself in a complex position during this crisis. As a member of the Tribune Group left, he was sympathetic to many of the policies that had driven the SDP defectors away, yet he was also increasingly aware of the electoral damage caused by Labour's internal divisions. In 1981, while still serving as Labour's education spokesman, Kinnock was alleged to have effectively scuppered Tony Benn's attempt to replace Denis Healey as Labour's Deputy Leader by first supporting the candidacy of the more traditionalist Tribunite John Silkin and then urging Silkin supporters to abstain on the second, run-off, ballot. This tactical manoeuvring demonstrated Kinnock's growing political sophistication and his determination to prevent the hard left from gaining complete control of the party leadership. In his opinion, the party "needed the contest like we needed bubonic plague".
Following Labour's defeat in the general election of 1979, Kinnock's political orientation underwent an abrupt change. James Callaghan appointed Kinnock to the Shadow Cabinet as education spokesman, thus ending his years as a back-bench "rebel". His ambition was noted by parliamentary colleagues, with David Owen's opposition to electoral college reforms attributed to concerns that such changes would favour Kinnock's eventual succession to the leadership. Kinnock remained as education spokesman following the resignation of Callaghan as Leader of the Labour Party and the election of Michael Foot as his successor in late 1980.
Kinnock became a member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in October 1978. As Shadow Education Secretary, Kinnock developed expertise in education policy and became a prominent critic of Conservative education reforms. He used his position to advocate for comprehensive education and oppose proposals for education vouchers and the restoration of grammar schools. His work in this role enhanced his profile within the party and demonstrated his ability to handle a major policy portfolio.
The existential threat posed by the SDP-Liberal Alliance became clear when the Alliance achieved remarkable success in early by-elections. Shirley Williams won Crosby in November 1981, achieving what was then the biggest reversal in by-election history, whilst Roy Jenkins narrowly won Glasgow Hillhead in March 1982. Opinion polls regularly showed the Alliance ahead of both main parties, raising the real possibility that Labour could be reduced to third-party status.
Kinnock was known as a left-winger, and gained prominence for his attacks on Margaret Thatcher's handling of the Falklands War in 1982. He questioned the government's conduct of the conflict and criticised what he saw as unnecessary military action, positions that reflected his anti-militarist stance but which proved unpopular with many voters who supported the war effort.