Jack Ashley, Baron Ashley of Stoke

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Jack Ashley, Baron Ashley of Stoke, CH PC (born 6 December 1922), is a Labour member of the United Kingdom House of Lords.

Ashley was educated at elementary school. He worked in the chemical process industry and as a crane driver and was a shop steward in the Chemical Workers' Union, a union of which he was the youngest executive member. He served in the Army and then won a scholarship to study at Ruskin College, Oxford, continuing his studies at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society. He worked as a research worker for the National Union for General and Municipal Workers. He later worked as a television producer for the BBC. He served on Widnes Borough Council as a councillor from 1946.

At the 1951 general election, Ashley contested Finchley without success. He was elected as Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Stoke on Trent South at the 1966 general election. At the age of 45 he became profoundly deaf as a result of complications of a routine ear operation. He was the United Kingdom's first totally deaf MP. He became a tireless campaigner for the disabled, especially the deaf and blind, and won broad cross-party sympathy, support and respect in parliament for his approach.

In 1986, Ashley and his wife founded the charity Defeating Deafness, now known as Deafness Research UK.

Ashley retired from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election and was made a Life peer Baron Ashley of Stoke, of Widnes in the County of Cheshire the same year.

His daughter, Jackie Ashley, is a journalist.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Ellis Smith	Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent South 1966–1992	Succeeded by George Stevenson