Simon Danczuk

Simon Christopher Danczuk^[1] (born 24 October 1966) is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Rochdale since 2010.

Early life and career

Danczuk started working life at 16 in a factory making gas fires for Main Gas before moving to the chemical company ICI.^[2] While working, he studied at night school and gained qualifications he had missed out at secondary school before gaining a place at Lancaster University, studying economic sociology and politics as a mature student.

Danczuk was co-founder with Ruth Turner of Urban Visions Limited, traded as Vision Twentyone, a research, public affairs and communications consultancy.^[3] He has also held research positions at The Big Issue in the North, Opinion Research Corporation, Bolton Bury TEC and worked for academics at Lancaster University. He has written widely on topics such as democracy, homelessness, regeneration, drugs, housing and employment.^[4] Danczuk was named one of the 42 under-42 up-and-coming stars of North West business by Business Insider magazine in 2001.^[5]

He founded The Necessary Group, a campaign group of businessmen and politicians, which campaigned prior to the expected referenda for an elected Regional Assembly for the North West of England.^[6]

Danczuk continued to be a director and majority shareholder of Urban Visions Limited, trading as Vision Twentyone, after becoming an MP. Urban Visions went into liquidation in June 2011, and was wound up owing £222,000 to creditors, including £113,000 to HM Revenue and Customs.^[3][7]

Labour Party

He has been involved in the Labour movement for many years having joined the Labour Party through the GMB trade union in the late 1980s. At the age of 27, he was elected as a councillor to Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, serving for 8 years with portfolios including economic development and then education.^[8]

Prior to his selection for Labour in Rochdale he was also campaign manager for Janet Anderson for Rossendale and Darwen Labour Party^[9] during the 2005 General Election – helping retain the seat for Labour with a reduced majority of 3,500. He was a campaign strategist for Labour Party during the 2006 Local Elections and sat on North West Labour’s Regional Board (the Party’s governing body for the region) for 13 years. He was Constituency Secretary for Rossendale and Darwen Labour Party from 1991 to 1994, when Anderson took the seat for Labour for the first time in 1992, from David Trippier.

Election as MP

Danczuk was selected in early 2007 to be Rochdale Labour Party's Prospective Parliamentary Candidate.^[8] The acrimonious selection process was delayed due to problems with postal voting and the local party passing a motion of no confidence in the selection process. Local members were concerned that the short-listing process was deliberately manipulated in order to exclude Afzal Khan, a Manchester councillor, who had received the highest number of nominations. In August 2006, Tribune magazine revealed that Danczuk's company Vision 21 had sent questionnaires to Labour members in Rochdale on behalf of the regional party - giving him an alleged unfair advantage as he had access to members' views.^[10] Danczuk reported that he received death threats during the selection process.^[9] The postal ballot got a 78% turnout and Danczuk received almost twice as many votes as the second-placed candidate.^[8]

In the 2010 election, Danczuk won 16,699 votes, unseating incumbent Liberal Democrat Paul Rowen, who received 15,810 as Conservative Mudasir Dean polled 8,305, despite concerns about the Prime Minister Gordon Brown's "bigoted woman" remark incident having occurred in Rochdale.^[11]

In May 2011 Danczuk made a criminal complaint to Essex Police about Liberal Democrat MP and Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne after it was alleged that Huhne had asked someone to take his penalty points for a speeding offence in 2003.^[12] On 3 February 2012, Huhne became the first Cabinet Minister in British political history to be forced from office as a result of criminal proceedings.^[13]

In the wake of the 2013 Labour Party Falkirk candidate selection controversy, Danczuk compared some elements of the hard left to the far-right British National Party (BNP) in an opinion piece in The Daily Telegraph.^[14]

Personal life

Danczuk is married to Karen Danczuk, who is a councillor for Kingsway, Rochdale.^[15]

Bibliography

• Walk on By… Begging, Street Drinking and the Giving Age, published by Crisis, 2001.^[16]
• The jury's out on user consultation, published by Druglink, 2002.

References

External links

• Official website
• Simon Danczuk, They Work For You