Colin Burgon (born 22 April 1948) is a British Labour Party

politician A politician is a person who participates in Public policy, policy-making processes, usually holding an elective position in government. Politicians represent the people, make decisions, and influence the formulation of public policy. The roles ...

who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for

Elmet Elmet (), sometimes Elmed or Elmete, was an independent Brittonic Celtic Cumbric-speaking kingdom between about the 4th century and mid-7th century. The people of Elmet survived as a distinctly recognised Brittonic Celtic group for centuri ...

from

1997 Events January * January 1 – The Emergency Alert System is introduced in the United States. * January 11 – Turkey threatens Cyprus on account of a deal to buy Russian S-300 missiles, prompting the Cypriot Missile Crisis. * January 1 ...

2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...

Early life

Colin Burgon was born in

Leeds Leeds is a city in West Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in Yorkshire and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds Metropolitan Borough, which is the second most populous district in the United Kingdom. It is built aro ...

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

, Labour-supporting parents. His mother, Winnie, was a school secretary; his father, Tommy, was a tailor; and his brother Terence also became a teacher. He was educated at St Charles R.C. Junior School and passed the

eleven-plus The eleven-plus (11+) is a standardised examination administered to some students in England and Northern Ireland in their last year of primary education, which governs admission to grammar schools and other secondary schools which use academi ...

exam, enabling him to attend St Michael's Catholic College in Woodhouse. In later life, Burgon said that alighting the bus wearing a grammar school uniform in

Gipton Gipton is a suburb of east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, between the A58 to the north and the A64 to the south. It is in the Gipton and Harehills ward of Leeds City Council and the Leeds East parliamentary constituency. The separate area ...

made him aware of the class system and made him "deplore structures that inherently deny opportunity to people". On leaving school, Burgon trained as a teacher at Carnegie College, Leeds, then studied at

Huddersfield Polytechnic The University of Huddersfield is a public research university located in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England. It has been a University since 1992, but has its origins in a series of institutions dating back to the 19th century. It has made te ...

. Burgon worked as a

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

teacher at Foxwood High School (which later became East Leeds Family Learning Centre and was demolished in 2009), a deprived secondary school in the

Seacroft Seacroft is an outer-city suburb/township consisting mainly of council estate housing covering an extensive area of east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It lies in the LS14 LS postcode area, Leeds postcode area, around east of Leeds city cen ...

area of East Leeds, where he was an active member of the NUT union. Burgon left teaching and the NUT in 1987 to work for Wakefield District Council as a local government policy and research officer. He was also a research officer with the

GMB Union The GMB is a general trade union in the United Kingdom which has more than 560,000 members. Its members work in nearly all industrial sectors, in retail, security, schools, distribution, the utilities, social care, the National Health Service (N ...

. Burgon was made an honorary member of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) for his support for NUM actions in the 1984–85 miners' strike. Before he became an MP, Burgon worked with Elmet miners and their families during and after the strike.

Parliamentary career

Burgon was the election agent for the Labour Party in

1983 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 of the ...

before being selected himself as the Labour candidate for Elmet. Burgon unsuccessfully contested Elmet in

1987 Events January * January 1 – Bolivia reintroduces the Boliviano currency. * January 2 – Chadian–Libyan conflict – Battle of Fada: The Military of Chad, Chadian army destroys a Libyan armoured brigade. * January 3 – Afghan leader ...

and

1992 1992 was designated as International Space Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 – Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt replaces Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru as United Nations Secretary-General. * January 6 ** The Republ ...

, both times coming second to the incumbent

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

, Spencer Batiste. In

, Burgon contested Elmet for the third time, finally defeating Batiste with an 8,779-vote majority. He was re-elected in

2001 The year's most prominent event was the September 11 attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror. The United States led a Participan ...

and

2005 2005 was designated as the International Year for Sport and Physical Education and the International Year of Microcredit. The beginning of 2005 also marked the end of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples, Internationa ...

. In the House of Commons, he was elected to sit on the

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...

Select committee in 2000, and the

Home Affairs Select Committee The Home Affairs Select Committee is a departmental select committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Remit The Home Affairs Committee is one of the House of Commons Select ...

in 2005. Burgon has also taken interest in

socialism Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

in South America, particularly in

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

. In May 2007, he wrote in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' in support of Venezuelan President

Hugo Chávez Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; ; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician, Bolivarian Revolution, revolutionary, and Officer (armed forces), military officer who served as the 52nd president of Venezuela from 1999 until De ...

and his government's controversial refusal to renew the broadcasting licence of a television station that had been openly supportive of the coup against Chávez's elected government. Burgon was the chairman of Labour Friends of Venezuela. He is on the left of the Labour Party and has vociferously criticised what he calls the "

neo-liberal Neoliberalism is a political and economic ideology that advocates for free-market capitalism, which became dominant in policy-making from the late 20th century onward. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and is most often used pej ...

" policies the party pursued during the

New Labour New Labour is the political philosophy that dominated the history of the British Labour Party from the mid-late 1990s to 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The term originated in a conference slogan first used by the ...

leaderships of

Prime Ministers A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but rat ...

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader ...

and

Gordon Brown James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. Previously, he was Chancellor of the Ex ...

."Labour must abandon its slick neoliberalism"
/ref> Burgon stood down from Parliament in

Personal life

Burgon is divorced and has one daughter. He has taken a keen interest in

opencast mining Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock or minerals from the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful ore or ro ...

, an important issue in

. His nephew

Richard Burgon Richard Burgon (born 19 September 1980) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds East since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, Burgon served as Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chance ...

has been a Labour MP since

2015 2015 was designated by the United Nations as: * International Year of Light * International Year of Soil __TOC__ Events January * January 1 – Lithuania officially adopts the euro as its currency, replacing the litas, and becomes ...

References

External links

Colin Burgon website

* ttps://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/colin_burgon/elmet TheyWorkForYou.com – Colin Burgon MP

News items

A1 upgrade in January 2003
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burgon, Colin 1948 births Living people Alumni of Leeds Beckett University Alumni of the University of Huddersfield Schoolteachers from Yorkshire English Roman Catholics Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies People from Allerton Bywater Politicians from Leeds UK MPs 1997–2001 UK MPs 2001–2005 UK MPs 2005–2010 People educated at Mount St Mary's Catholic High School, Leeds Local government in Wakefield