Roy Delville Roebuck (25 September 1929 – 17 December 2023) was a British Labour Party politician and journalist. He was the Member of Parliament for

Harrow East Harrow East is a constituency in Greater London created in 1945 and represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Bob Blackman, a Conservative. Constituency profile The censuses of 2001 and 2011 show the overwhelmingl ...

from 1966 to 1970.

Early life

Roebuck was born in

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

on 25 September 1929. He served in the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

for his

National Service National service is a system of compulsory or voluntary government service, usually military service. Conscription is mandatory national service. The term ''national service'' comes from the United Kingdom's National Service (Armed Forces) Act ...

from 1948 to 1950, working as a wireless operator in the Far East Air Force. From 1950 to 1966, he was a journalist, working for the ''Stockport Advertiser'', ''Northern Daily Telegraph'', ''Yorkshire Evening News'', ''

Manchester Evening Chronicle ''Manchester Evening Chronicle'' was a newspaper established by Sir Edward Hulton, a Manchester City chairman, a newspaper proprietor and a racehorse owner. It started publication in 1897, was renamed ''Evening Chronicle'' in 1914 but stayed in ...

'', ''

News Chronicle The ''News Chronicle'' was a British daily newspaper. Formed by the merger of '' The Daily News'' and the '' Daily Chronicle'' in 1930, it ceased publication on 17 October 1960,''Liberal Democrat News'' 15 October 2010, accessed 15 October 2010 b ...

'', ''

Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first ...

'', ''

Daily Mirror The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily Tabloid journalism, tabloid newspaper. Founded in 1903, it is part of Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), which is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the tit ...

'' and ''Daily Herald''. Roebuck was also assistant editor of ''Forward'', a socialist newspaper. He became a freelance journalist in 1966, and was a columnist for the ''

London Evening News The ''London Evening News'' was an evening newspaper published in London beginning on 14 August 1855. It was cheap, at a halfpenny per issue. It changed its name to ''The Day'' but "gave a poor news service", and had failed by 1859. Sources ...

'' from 1968 to 1970.

Political career

Roebuck unsuccessfully fought Altrincham and Sale for Labour in

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 – In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patria ...

and at a 1965 by-election. He was elected as the Member of Parliament for

1966 Events January * January 1 – In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa takes over as military ruler of the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko. * January 3 – 1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état: President Maurice Yaméogo i ...

, an election which his party won, in which he gained the

marginal seat A marginal seat or swing seat is a constituency held with a small majority in a legislative election, generally one conducted under a single-winner voting system. In Canada, they may be known as target ridings. The opposite is a safe seat. T ...

from 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 ...

Anthony Courtney Commander Anthony Tosswill Courtney, OBE, RN (16 May 1908 – 24 January 1988) was a British Royal Navy officer and politician. While a Member of Parliament, he was a victim of a plot apparently instituted by the KGB to discredit him, which app ...

. In

Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

, Roebuck was a member of the Select Committees on Estimates (1968–70) and the Parliamentary Commissioner (1968–70). From 1966 to 1967, Roebuck was an aide to George Wigg, the

Paymaster-General His Majesty's Paymaster General or HM Paymaster General is a ministerial position in the Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom. The position is currently held by Nick Thomas-Symonds of the Labour Party. History The post was created in 1836 by ...

. Roebuck was a founder member of the Labour Common Market Safeguards Committee in 1967. At the 1970 general election, when he lost the seat to the Conservative candidate

Hugh Dykes Hugh John Maxwell Dykes, Baron Dykes, (born 17 May 1939) is a British politician and member of the House of Lords. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1997, and later defected to the Liberal Democrats. Family a ...

. Roebuck unsuccessfully stood in

Leek A leek is a vegetable, a cultivar of ''Allium ampeloprasum'', the broadleaf wild leek (synonym (taxonomy), syn. ''Allium porrum''). The edible part of the plant is a bundle of Leaf sheath, leaf sheaths that is sometimes erroneously called a "s ...

, another marginal seat, at the February 1974 general election.

Outside Parliament

Roebuck trained at the

Inns of Court School of Law The City Law School is a law school in London, England, and it is one of the six schools of City, University of London. The law school traces its origins to the Inns of Court School of Law (ICSL), which was founded in 1852. The ICSL became par ...

, and was

called to the Bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

Gray's Inn The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and Wale ...

in 1974. From 1975 to 1983, he worked for his former parliamentary boss, who had become Lord Wigg, and was President of the Betting Office Licensees Association. Roebuck sat on the Board of Governors at

Moorfields Eye Hospital Moorfields Eye Hospital is a specialist National Health Service (NHS) eye hospital in Finsbury in the London Borough of Islington in London, England run by Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Together with the UCL Institute of Ophthal ...

from 1984 to 1988. Robeuck was a governor at Thornhill School in Islington from 1986 to 1988. He was also a member of the Islington Community Health Council from 1988 to 1992, and became a Fellow of the

Atlantic Council The Atlantic Council is an American think tank in the field of international affairs, favoring Atlanticism, founded in 1961. It manages sixteen regional centers and functional programs related to international security and global economic prosp ...

in 1993. In 1997, whilst in his late 60s, he gained a law degree (

LLM A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with Self-supervised learning, self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially Natural language generation, language g ...

) from the

University of Leicester The University of Leicester ( ) is a public university, public research university based in Leicester, England. The main campus is south of the city centre, adjacent to Victoria Park, Leicester, Victoria Park. The university's predecessor, Univ ...

, and received an MA in 2000.

Personal life and death

Roebuck married virologist Dr Mary Ogilvy Adams, they had a son, Gavin (www.gavinroebuck.com) Roebuck's wife died in 1995. He listed his recreations in ''Who's Who'' as "tennis, ski-ing, music, reading

Hansard ''Hansard'' is the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official printe ...

and the public prints". Roebuck lived in

Islington Islington ( ) is an inner-city area of north London, England, within the wider London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's #Islington High Street, High Street to Highbury Fields ...

, north London. He died on 17 December 2023, at the age of 94.

References

*''Times Guide to the House of Commons February 1974'' * https://www.thetimes.com/article/obroebuckroy-3n30dc89n https://www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/barrister-who-was-driven-to-seek-justice-for-all https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2023/12/20/roy-roebuck-labour-mp-wilsons-young-eagles-died-obituary/

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Roebuck, Roy 1929 births 2023 deaths Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1966–1970 Politicians from Manchester