Denzil Davies
Template:Short description Template:More citations needed Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox officeholder David John Denzil Davies Template:Post-nominals (9 October 1938 – 10 October 2018) was a Welsh Labour Party politician. He served for 35 years as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Llanelli from 1970 to 2005. He was a Treasury Minister (1975–1979); a member of Labour's Shadow Cabinet team (1979–1988); and a member of the Privy Council.
Early life
The son of a colliery blacksmith, Denzil Davies was born and brought up in Cynwyl Elfed, in rural Carmarthenshire. From his childhood in this Welsh-speaking area, Davies spoke Welsh fluently. <ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He attended Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School for Boys in Carmarthen, and then Pembroke College, Oxford, where he graduated with a First Class Honours BA in Law and Gray's Inn where he qualified as a barrister. He lectured in Law at the University of Chicago in 1963 and the University of Leeds from 1964. He practised at the tax bar between 1967 and 1975. Later he also practised in the field of personal injuries and served as a head of chambers.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Parliamentary career
Davies unsuccessfully sought the Labour nomination for the 1966 Carmarthen by-election, losing out to Gwilym Prys-Davies.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
Davies was elected in the 1970 general election as the Member of Parliament for Llanelli, following Jim Griffiths.
From June 1975 to May 1979, he was a Treasury Minister in the Labour Government first of Harold Wilson and then of James Callaghan.
A Eurosceptic, Davies campaigned against Britain's entry into the EEC.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
He was a supporter of Welsh devolution in the 1979 Referendum. <ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 1997, he was a strong critic of the Labour Government's plans for limited devolution for Wales, challenging them as inadequate and undemocratic.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Davies served in a number of posts when Labour formed the Official Opposition after the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, including Shadow Secretary of State for Wales in Michael Foot's Shadow Cabinet and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in Neil Kinnock's. He was popular among Labour MPs, and was regularly elected to the Shadow Cabinet without being part of any factional “slate” and without any organised campaign: in 1986 he reached third place in the Shadow Cabinet ballot.
Like his predecessor as Shadow Defence Secretary, John Silkin, he resigned from the front bench in June 1988 in protest at Neil Kinnock's management style. The trigger for his resignation was Kinnock's announcement, without reference to Davies or the Shadow Cabinet, of a change in Labour's defence policy, from unilateral nuclear disarmament to multilateral nuclear disarmament and then back to unilateral nuclear disarmament, over a period of three days. He made an unsuccessful bid for the Labour Party deputy leadership in 1983.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Davies was one of the few Labour MPs with ministerial experience at the time of the 1997 landslide that returned the party to power after 18 years in opposition. However, he was not included in any of the governments formed by Tony Blair. As a backbencher Davies continued to oppose Britain's membership of the EU.<ref>https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo020227/debtext/20227-03.htm Template:Webarchive, Hansard, 27 February 2002. Retrieved 12 September 2017.</ref>
In March 2003, he was one of the Labour MPs who voted against the Iraq War.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
He stood down at the 2005 general election, and was succeeded by Nia Griffith. He died on 10 October 2018.
Personal life
He married Mary Ann Finlay in 1963.Template:Citation needed They had a son and daughter.Template:Citation needed They divorced in 1988.Template:Citation needed He married Ann Carlton in 1989.Template:Citation needed
Publications
- Booth: Residence and Domicile in U.K. Taxation (successive editions)
- Maximise Damages, Minimise Taxes (1993)
- World Trade Organisation and GATT (1994)
- The Galilean and the Goose – How Christianity converted the Roman Empire (2010 Template:ISBN)
References
External links
Template:S-start Template:S-par Template:Succession box
Template:S-end Template:1983 Labour Party deputy leadership election Template:Shadow Defence Secretaries
- 1938 births
- 2018 deaths
- Welsh Labour MPs
- Alumni of Pembroke College, Oxford
- Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
- UK MPs 1970–1974
- UK MPs 1974
- UK MPs 1974–1979
- UK MPs 1979–1983
- UK MPs 1983–1987
- UK MPs 1987–1992
- UK MPs 1992–1997
- UK MPs 1997–2001
- UK MPs 2001–2005
- Members of Gray's Inn
- Academics of the University of Leeds
- University of Chicago Law School faculty
- People educated at Queen Elizabeth High School, Carmarthen
- Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Carmarthenshire constituencies
- British Eurosceptics