Stan Newens | |
|---|---|
| Member of Parliament forEpping | |
| In office 15 October 1964 – 29 May 1970 | |
| Preceded by | Graeme Finlay |
| Succeeded by | Norman Tebbit |
| Member of Parliament forHarlow | |
| In office 28 February 1974 – 13 May 1983 | |
| Preceded by | Constituency established |
| Succeeded by | Jerry Hayes |
| Member of the European Parliament forLondon Central | |
| In office 1984–1999 | |
| Preceded by | David Nicolson |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Arthur Stanley Newens (1930-02-04)4 February 1930 Bethnal Green, London, England |
| Died | 2 March 2021(2021-03-02) (aged 91) |
| Political party | Labour and Co-operative |
| Education | |
Arthur Stanley Newens (4 February 1930 – 2 March 2021) was a BritishLabour Co-operative politician. He was aMember of Parliament (MP) from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1983, and aMember of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1984 to 1999.
Born inBethnal Green, Newens was educated atBuckhurst Hill County High School.[1] He died in March 2021 at the age of 91.[2]
Newens was aconscientious objector duringNational Service and worked as a coalminer inStaffordshire. He graduated in History fromUniversity College London, and became a schoolteacher. In 1949 he joined theLabour Party, and was still a member. At UCL, he metAnil Moonesinghe, aSri LankanTrotskyist, who was later to become a Cabinet Minister inSri Lanka, and joined the Socialist Review Group led byTony Cliff, a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), which later became theSocialist Workers Party (SWP); he left this group in 1959. He held several posts in theNational Union of Teachers and was chairman of theMovement for Colonial Freedom and president of theLondon Co-operative Society.
Newens subsequently represented twoEssex constituencies as a Labour MP. He was elected forEpping in 1964, and lost the seat in 1970. In 1974, he became the first MP forHarlow, but lost the seat in theConservative landslide of 1983. Following this, he became an MEP for theLondon Central constituency in 1984, which he served until 1999. He stood for Harlow again in 1987, but was not successful in being re-elected to theHouse of Commons.
He held several senior positions, including Vice Chair of thePLP Foreign Affairs Group and Chair and Deputy Leader of the Labour Group of MEPs. He was generally seen as a prominent left-winger, campaigning against theVietnam War and for other international causes.
Newens was an active trade unionist, and wrote numerous pamphlets and books, includingThe Case Against Nato (1972),Third World: Change or Chaos (1977),A History of Struggle: 50th Anniversary of Liberation, formerly the Movement for Colonial Freedom (2004) andNicolae Ceausescu: The Man, His Ideas and His Socialist Achievements (1972). He was also a local historian of Essex and East London; his book "A History of North Weald Bassett and Its People" was published in 1985, and his study of writerArthur Morrison was published inLoughton in 2008.
His autobiography,In Quest of a Fairer Society: My Life and Politics, was published in November 2013 by The Memoir Club.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forEpping 1964–1970 | Succeeded by |
| New constituency | Member of Parliament forHarlow Feb 1974–1983 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
