David Clark, Baron Clark

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The Rt Hon Lord Clark of Windermere (Image Copyright: Lord Clark)

Dr David George Clark, Baron Clark, PC (born 19 October 1939 in Castle Douglas, Scotland) is a British Labour politician and author. He joined the UK Labour Party in 1959 and the Co-operative Party two years later.

He attended Bowness Elementary School and Windermere Grammar School in Cumbria.

After leaving school, he worked as a forester and then as a Laboratory Assistant in a textile mill before becoming a student teacher in 1959. He attended the University of Manchester as a mature student from 1960, gaining a BA in Economics, then later an MSc. He was President of the Students' Union. In 1978 he gained a PhD from the University of Sheffield.

He was a Lecturer in Government and Administration at the University of Salford from 1965-70 and a Tutor at University of Manchester from 1967-1970. He was elected Member of Parliament for Colne Valley from 1970 to 1974. After losing in the February 1974 General Election, be became a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Huddersfield Polytechnic (now the University of Huddersfield) until 1979 when he returned to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for South Shields in Tyne and Wear, a seat he held until his retirement in 2001.

He was popular among fellow Labour MPs and was regularly elected to the Shadow Cabinet while the party was in opposition. He held a number of Shadow portfolios, including Agriculture Fisheries & Food (1972-74), Defence (1980-81), Environment (1981-87), Food Agricultural and Rural Affairs (1987-92), and Defence (1992-97). Although Clark was not a strong supporter of New Labour, he did support Tony Blair's bid for the party leadership, and continued as Shadow Defence Secretary following Blair's appointment.

Clark's long-standing position as a member of Labour's frontbench team meant Tony Blair was obliged to appoint him to the Cabinet when the party was elected to government in May 1997. However, he was not given a senior or middle-ranking position, and instead was given the office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with responsibility for producing a White Paper on Freedom of Information which was published in July 1998.

Lord Clark, upon gaining the Freedom of the Borough, with Lady Windermere and their daughter.

He opposed moves to water-down the freedom of information proposals from what had been proposed by Labour in Opposition, and this led to his sacking. At the time, he said that he believed his sacking was also because of his insistence on living in the North-East and "missing out on the London cocktail circuit". Additionally, Blair's sacking of Clark and another "old Labour" figure, Gavin Strang, was in order to bring two Liberal Democrats into the Cabinet, a plan thwarted by John Prescott and others.

Heavily involved and interested in Bosnia, Clark was forced to apologise for not declaring a 1993 meeting with Radovan Karadžić in the Register of Members' Interest, as he "thought it had been a United Nations-funded trip".

Two years later, on 23 October 2000, he stood for the job of Speaker of the House of Commons in succession to Betty Boothroyd but was unsuccessful (192 votes in favour, 257 against). He stood down from the House of Commons in 2001, making way in his South Shields constituency for the New Labour rising star David Miliband. He was given a life peerage as Baron Clark of Windermere, of Windermere in the County of Cumbria, and now sits in the House of Lords.

Lord Clark's ongoing political interests include Bosnia, open spaces, hunting and bloodsports (to which he is opposed), defence, and the environment.

He was awarded Freedom of the Borough of South Shields in February 1999, and is a long-standing fan of Carlisle United Football Club, of which he is a Director. Clark was Chair of the Atlantic Council of the UK (1998-2003), and has been Leader of the North Atlantic Assembly since 2001, having been a member since 1980. He was a member of the Executive of the National Trust from 1980-1994. He is Chair of the Forestry Commission; a non-executive director of the Homeowners Friendly Society, the Thales Group, and the UK Friendly Insurance Services. He is a trustee of the Vindolanda Trust, the History of Parliament Trust, and the Gravetye Trust, and a patron of the UK Defence Forum.

He married Christine Kirkby, a nurse, in 1970 and they have one daughter, Catherine. He lives in Windermere, and lists his recreations as gardening, fell walking, reading, and watching football.

[edit] External links

• Rt. Hon. Dr. David Clark Home page
  • Biography
  • Books