Phillip Whitehead


Phillip Whitehead was a British Labour politician, television producer and writer.

Early life

Born in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, he was adopted by a local family in Rowsley, and attended Lady Manners School in Bakewell and Exeter College, Oxford, where he obtained his BA degree.
Whitehead went up to Oxford following in his adoptive parents' footsteps as a Conservative. He was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association and the Oxford Union in 1961.

Career

Whitehead was an independent documentary producer in the early 1960s and later an editor with the BBC and ITV from 1967 to 1970. He was married to Christine Usborne, formerly his assistant, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

House of Commons

After standing unsuccessfully at West Derbyshire in 1966, he represented Derby North as a Labour MP from 1970 to 1983, when he was defeated by the Conservative Greg Knight. He tried to win back the seat in 1987 but was beaten once again.
Whitehead was a member of several parliamentary committees:
After his defeat at the 1983 general election, Whitehead returned to television as a producer and director. He was also author of several books derived, with the exception of his Fabian essays, from the television series he produced:
  • The Writing On The Wall: Britain in the Seventies ;
  • Dynasty: The Nehrus and the Gandhis
  • contributor to Changing States, Fabian Essays, Ruling Dimension
  • The Windsors—A Dynasty Revealed 1917–2000
  • Stalin, a Time for Judgement
In 1988 he was MacTaggart Memorial Lecturer at the Edinburgh TV Festival.

European Parliament

He was a Labour member of the European Parliament from 1994 to his death, first serving as MEP for Staffordshire East and Derby, and later as one of the members for the East Midlands.
On 23 July 2004 he was elected chair of the Parliamentary Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection. He was also member of the European Parliament's African, Caribbean and Pacific Joint Parliamentary Assembly and chair of the European Parliamentary Labour Party.
A list of EP committees of which Whitehead was a member:
Other professional memberships held by Whitehead:
He retained a close association with Derbyshire, especially the Bakewell area, throughout his life. Whitehead was taken ill on 31 December 2005 and died later that evening in a hospital in Chesterfield from a heart attack aged 68.
In recognition of his service to the city The Phillip Whitehead Memorial Library, a public library on Chaddesden Park in Derby, was opened in March 2013.