John Spellar

Spellar was born in Bromley and educated at Dulwich College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He was Chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club in 1967.[1]

Spellar was the Political Officer of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU) from 1969 to 1992,[2] and was a speech-writer for general secretaries Frank Chapple and Eric Hammond.[1] As a young union officer he attended, along with John Golding and Roger Godsiff, the St Ermin's group of senior trade union leaders who organised to prevent the Bennite left taking over the party in the years 1981–1987.[3]

He was a councillor in the London Borough of Bromley between 1970 and 1974.[1]

Spellar stood for the constituency of Bromley at the 1970 general election as Labour's youngest candidate.[1]

He was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1982 Birmingham Northfield by-election but lost at the 1983 General Election to the Conservative candidate, Roger King. At the 1987 general election he stood again for the same seat but was again unsuccessful against Roger King.[1] Spellar returned to the House of Commons in the 1992 general election becoming the MP for Warley West with a majority of 5,472, and was appointed an opposition whip. Following a period as opposition spokesman for Northern Ireland in 1994, he was moved to shadow Defence minister in 1995.

In 1997, Warley West was abolished and Spellar was selected to stand for Warley, which he won in that year with a majority of 15,451.

When Tony Blair formed his government in 1997, Spellar was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, being promoted to become Minister of State for the Armed Forces in 1999. In 2001, he was appointed to the Privy Council, as Minister of State for Transport in the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions[2] with rights to attend Cabinet. After the 2002 reshuffle, he became Minister of State at the Department for Transport, and moved to the Northern Ireland Office in 2003. He was banned from the offices of both the Mayor of Derry and the Mayor of Belfast during that year, because he supported the reinstatement to the British Army of convicted murderers Mark Wright and James Fisher of the Scots Guards.[4] He left the front benches in 2005, but in 2008, he rejoined the government as a whip (Comptroller of the Household) and served until Labour entered opposition in May 2010.

In November 2015, he suggested on BBC Radio 5 Live that his party leader Jeremy Corbyn should resign over the question of whether to conduct air strikes on ISIL in Syria, saying: "What we're seeing here is an attempted coup by Jeremy Corbyn and the people around him in the bunker trying to take over the party. It's unacceptable. How does Jeremy Corbyn and his tiny band of Trots in the bunker think they've got the unique view on it all? If anyone should resign after this incident, it should be Jeremy Corbyn."[5] He supported Owen Smith in the 2016 Labour leadership election.[6]

Spellar is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel.[7][8] He is a Director of the centre-left Labour grouping, Labour First[9] and also of the Henry Jackson Society Advisory Council.[10]

In June 2016, Spellar raised a formal objection to a parliamentary order creating the West Midlands Combined Authority, delaying its creation, because its size had been increased since its proposal and Spellar believed its funding was not clear.[11]

Spellar supported continued membership of the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum.[12]

In March 2019, Spellar was the only Labour MP to vote against allowing compulsory LGBT education in schools, prompting criticism from the Liberal Democrats and LGBT Labour.[13] He apologised two weeks later, highlighting the fact that he had made a mistake and was misguided.[14]

In July 2021, he introduced a private Members Bill to recognise the Armenian genocide.[15]

Spellar is a supporter of domestic vaccine passports during the COVID-19 pandemic and criticised the decision to hold a review into the possibility of adopting them, stating that this shows "no sense of urgency".[16][17]

Spellar was married to dentist Anne Wilmot from 1981 until her death in 2003.[18] They had a daughter.[1]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Spellar.

• John Spellar official site
• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard 1803–2005
• Voting record at Public Whip
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou