Tristram Hunt

The Honourable Tristram Hunt FRHistS
Shadow Secretary of State for Education
Incumbent
Assumed office 7 October 2013
Leader	Ed Miliband
Preceded by	Stephen Twigg
Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central
Incumbent
Assumed office 6 May 2010
Preceded by	Mark Fisher
Majority	5,566 (17.1%)
Personal details
Born	Tristram Julian William Hunt (1974-05-31) 31 May 1974 Cambridge, United Kingdom
Political party	Labour
Spouse(s)	Juliet Thornback
Children	2 daughters 1 son
Alma mater	Trinity College, Cambridge
Religion	Anglicanism
Website	Official website

Tristram Julian William Hunt, FRHistS (born 31 May 1974) is a British Labour Party politician, historian and broadcast journalist, who currently serves as Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central in Staffordshire.

Hunt is a lecturer in modern British history at Queen Mary University of London.^[1] He has written several books and in his work as a broadcaster has presented history programmes on television. He is a regular writer for The Guardian and The Observer.^[2]

A member of the Labour Party, Hunt supported the Party as an activist for several years before working on the Party's staff. He entered the political arena professionally, being returned to Parliament as an MP at the 2010 general election.

Early life and education

Hunt is the son of Julian Hunt, Baron Hunt of Chesterton, a meteorologist and leader of the Labour Group on Cambridge City Council in 1972-73, who was created a Labour Life Peer on the recommendation of Tony Blair in 2000.^[3] He was educated at University College School, an independent school in London, where he achieved two As (History and Latin) and a B (English Literature) at A-Level. He read History at Trinity College, Cambridge as well as at the University of Chicago, and was for a time an Associate Fellow of the Centre for History and Economics at King's College, Cambridge. He undertook postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge and completed his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 2000. His thesis was titled Civic thought in Britain, c.1820– c.1860. While at Cambridge he was a member of the Footlights, where he was a contemporary of David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

Career as a historian

Hunt was a Fellow of the Institute for Public Policy Research and sits on the board of the New Local Government Network (2004). He has made many appearances on television, presenting programmes on the English Civil War (2002), the theories of Sir Isaac Newton (Great Britons, 2002),^[4] and the rise of the middle class, and makes regular appearances on BBC Radio 4, having presented broadcasts on such topics as the history of the signature. His first book is The English Civil War: At First Hand (2002, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 029782953X).

Hunt's specialism is urban history, specifically during the Victorian era, and it is this subject which provided him with his second book, Building Jerusalem (2004, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 0297607677). This book, covering such notable Victorian minds as John Ruskin, Joseph Chamberlain and Thomas Carlyle received many favourable reviews, but some criticism, notably a scathing review in the Times Literary Supplement by J. Mordaunt Crook ('The Future was Bromley', TLS, 13 August 2004). In 2006, Hunt wrote Making our Mark, a publication celebrating CPRE's eightieth anniversary. He then completed a BBC series entitled The Protestant Revolution, examining the influence of Protestantism on British and international attitudes to work and leisure for broadcast on BBC Four.^[5]

Turning to biography, Hunt wrote The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, ISBN 0713998520 (US title: Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, ISBN 0805080252), published in May 2009. For the book, Hunt researched at German and Russian libraries and begins with an account of the author's own trip to Engels, Russia. The biography received a number of favourable reviews, including one from Roy Hattersley, the former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, in The Observer.^[6] In 2007 he was a judge for the Samuel Johnson Prize,^[7] the winner being Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

Political career

Hunt worked for the Labour Party at Millbank Tower during the 1997 general election; he also worked at party headquarters during the following 2001 general election and during the 2005 general election he campaigned for Oona (now Baroness) King in Bethnal Green and Bow.

Hunt twice submitted his name unsuccessfully for selection as a Labour parliamentary candidate: Liverpool West Derby, where Stephen Twigg was selected (2007),^[8] and Leyton and Wanstead, where John Cryer was reselected (2009).^[9]

Hunt was selected to contest the constituency of Stoke-on-Trent Central on 1 April 2010, succeeding Labour's outgoing MP, Mark Fisher.^[10][11] Because the candidacy was filled just before the election, the shortlist was drawn up by Labour's ruling National Executive Committee selection panel, with none on the shortlist local to Stoke-on-Trent. This led to the secretary of the Constituency Labour Party, Gary Elsby, standing against Hunt as an independent candidate in protest.^[12][13] Despite the controversy of being "parachuted in" to the district Hunt was elected with 38.8% of the vote. Despite being the constituency's closest fought contest in decades, Hunt still boasted a majority of 5,566 over his nearest rival.^[14]

In April 2013, Hunt was appointed a Shadow Education Minister, replacing Karen Buck who advanced as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ed Miliband. On 7 October 2013, Hunt was promoted to the Shadow Cabinet, replacing Stephen Twigg as Shadow Secretary of State for Education.

In February 2014, Hunt crossed an authorised University and College Union picket line at Queen Mary University of London to teach his students about "Marx, Engels and the Making of Marxism", defending himself on the grounds that he was not a member of the union.^[15] He was strongly criticised in the Morning Star^[16] and by West Bromwich MP Tom Watson, who described Hunt's behaviour as 'preposterous'.^[17]

Political views

Hunt is a trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund and has a column with the British Sunday paper The Observer. He wrote an essay in the New Statesman comparing Cromwell's Republic to the Islamic fundamentalism dominant in Afghanistan at that time (2001).^[18]

Speaking of his constituency, Hunt said that "The key to helping manufacturing is investing in education and schools and also selling Stoke nationally and internationally as a place to invest."^[19] He also criticised the local council's decision "to try to obliterate the past out and sort of 'cleanse', removing the old bottle ovens and other relics".^[20] He instead believed that the city's reputation as a quality pottery maker should be exploited.^[20] He has also stated he could better serve his constituency were he to become a Government Minister.^[20]

Hunt was accused of implying, in a BBC Question Time discussion on teachers without qualifications, that nuns do not make good teachers. His comments were criticised by Conservative MPs and Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson. Hunt stated that he did not mean to cause offence to nuns.^[21]

In 2014 Hunt proposed that private schools should be required to form "partnerships" with local state schools if they wanted to keep their charitable status^[22] Critics accused him of fighting a "class war" against private schools.^[23] Hunt was accused of hypocrisy as he himself has attended a private school and has stated he would consider sending his three children to a private school.^[24]

Personal life

Hunt is married to Juliet Thornback^[25] by whom he has one son and two daughters; they live in London. His brother-in-law is the author Giles Foden. His cousin is Virginia, Baroness Bottomley, the former National Heritage Secretary.

Titles from birth

• Mr Tristram Hunt (1974–2000)
• The Hon Tristram Hunt (May 2000 – October 2000)^[26]
• The Hon Dr Tristram Hunt (October 2000 – 2010)^[27]
• The Hon Dr Tristram Hunt MP (2010–present)

See also

• Courtesy titles in the United Kingdom

Bibliography

• The English Civil War: At First Hand (2002, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 029782953X)
• Building Jerusalem (2004, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 0297607677)
• The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels (2009, ISBN 0713998520) (US title: Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, ISBN 9780805080254)
• Ten Cities That Made an Empire (2014) (US title: Cities of Empire: The British Colonies and the Creation of the Urban World, Metropolitan Books, ISBN 9780805093087)

References

External links

• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Voting record at Public Whip
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou
• University Profile
• www.royalhistsoc.org
• www.burkespeerage.com
• Article archive at The Guardian
• Tristram Hunt at the Internet Movie Database

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Mark Fisher	Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central 2010–present	Incumbent
Political offices
Preceded by Stephen Twigg	Shadow Secretary of State for Education 2013–present	Incumbent

Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet Leadership Miliband (Leader) Harman (Deputy Leader) Winterton (Chief Whip) Shadow Cabinet Members Alexander Balls Bassam Benn Burnham Coaker Cooper Creagh Curran De Piero Dugher A Eagle M Eagle Flint Hunt Khan Leslie Lewis Powell Reeves Royall Smith Umunna Also Attending Meetings Bach Cruddas Cryer Kendall Reynolds Trickett Wood

Authority control VIAF: 47051611 ISNI: 0000 0000 7369 7655 SUDOC: 110117638