Peter Watt
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Peter Watt has been the General Secretary of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom since January 2006, taking over from Matt Carter.
Watt trained as a nurse, practicing from 1992 to 1996.
Watt worked for the Labour Party since 1996, first as a local organiser for Battersea and Wandsworth, then working in head office on election delivery and recruitment and then as Regional Director of the Eastern region. He returned to head office as Director of Finance and Compliance, a role that bridges legal and financial party issues and also usually includes a tacit role of enforcing party discipline and sorting out internal disputes. He has worked for Labour for the past nine years in a variety of roles. Viewed as loyal to the party leadership, he has on occasion come into conflict with the trade union movement over party policy and organisation, especially apparent at the Labour Party Conference in 2005.
Watt was also the source of controversy at the Irish Labour Party's 2006 Annual Conference in Dublin, where he was a guest speaker. A silent protest by a group of young activists protesting against the British Labour government's role in the war on Iraq disrupted his speech [1][2].
Watt was appointed as General Secretary by the Party's National Executive Committee on 7 November 2005. He was apparently not the candidate favoured by Tony Blair but won the NEC vote by some margin [3].
He is married and the father of three children as well as an active foster carer.
Political offices | ||
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Preceded by Matt Carter |
General Secretary of the Labour Party 2006–Present |
Succeeded by (current incumbent) |