Chris Mullin (politician)

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Chris MullinMP
Chris Mullin
MP

Christopher John Mullin, known as Chris Mullin, (born 12 December 1947 in Chelmsford, Essex) is an UK Labour politician, currently the member of Parliament for the English constituency of Sunderland South. He read Law at the University of Hull

Before being elected as an MP, he was a journalist working with the well-respected ITV documentary programme World in Action and had campaigned for the release of the Birmingham Six, a notorious miscarriage of justice. He was also editor of the Tribune newspaper (1982-84).

Mullin was first elected MP in 1987, and has been returned at every subsequent election to 2005. His constituency was the first to declare in every general election since 1992 (1992, 1997, 2001, and 2005). His wife is of Vietnamese ethnicity and they have two daughters.

He was a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, Secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Vietnam and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cambodia, Member of the Home Affairs Select Committee (1992–97), Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee (1997–99). Despite his criticism of the government, he was a junior minister from 1999 to 2001, as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, DETR and Minister of State, Department for International Development (2001).

He returned to government in June 2003, as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, but after the 2005 election again returned to the backbenches. Before the Labour victory of 1997, Mullin had attained a reputation for campaigning on behalf of victims of injustice and opposition to the curtailing of civil rights which may have been sullied by his most recent stretch as a junior minister. Recently, however, his vote against the government's 90-days detention without trial for terrorist suspects proposal - as one of 49 Labour rebels - may indicate a re-emergence of his civil libertarian instincts, now that further ministerial promotion under Tony Blair seems unlikely.

[edit] Works

A Very British Coup, described the destabilisation (and ultimate replacement) of a left wing British government by the forces of the Establishment. The novel appeared in the early 1980s and was adapted for television, with substantial alterations to the plot in 1988.

[edit] External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Gordon Bagier		 Member of Parliament for Sunderland South
1987 – present		 Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by
Richard Clements		 Editor of Tribune
1982–1984		 Succeeded by
Nigel Williamson
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