Tag Archives: tam dalyell

Memories of Tam Dalyell 1932-2017

At the 2005 General Election the people of West Lothian entered a new era. For the first time in 43 years there were facing the fact that for the first time in 43 years none of them would be represented by Tam Dalyell.

At that election I was selected to stand in the parts of his former West Lothian constituency that lay to the north, including his ancestral home the House of the Binns. When he first posed the West Lothian question, as it became known, about the role of MPs of devolved parts of the UK, I don’t think he thought he’d still be waiting for the definitive answer 40 years later when he died.

He dedicated his autobiography “The Importance of Being Awkward”  to

the men and women of West Lothian – Labour, SNP, Conservative, Liberal, Communist – who, whatever their political opinions, were kind to me in all sorts of ways over 43 years as their representative in the House of Commons.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 6 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • cim
    Where have young politically active people being going in recent years in the UK as an outlet for their anger? Corbyn's Labour. The Greens. Corbyn's new party. ...
  • Graham Evans
    Whatever the message, we need a leader who can clearly enunciate it, and not simply make party policy on the hoof. Ed Davey's intervention on the issue of local...
  • Peter Davies
    "Wanting to tear down historical statues , monuments , portraits, sanatise books etc ….It’s what the Taliban did in Afghanistan." It's also something Cromwe...
  • PM
    If Brexit is the cause of all our problems in the UK, what is the cause of the similar, or even worse, problems in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy etc? The ...
  • David S
    Even if one's conclusion after examining all the complexities of the Civil War (which is a good deal more than "monarchy vs. democracy") is that Cromwell was a ...