David Lea

Lord Lea of Crondall, Chairman of the Hammarskjöld Inquiry Trust shaking hands with Jan Eliasson, UN Deputy Secretary-General

David Edward Lea, Baron Lea of Crondall OBE (born 2 November 1937) in Tyldesley, Lancashire is a British Labour Party politician and a member of the House of Lords. Lord Lea has been the co-founder and Vice-Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Africa since 2002.

In April 2013, Lord Lea publicly stated that fellow peer and former MI6 officer Daphne Park admitted to him shortly before her death that the UK government had organised the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.

On 3 October 2013, David Lea presented UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson with a copy of the Hammarskjöld Commission's report that was issued in The Hague in September 2013 and recommended reopening the UN Inquiry into the 1961 death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.

In April 2014, an e-petition was created and addressed to the UN Secretary-General:

"We ask the UN General Assembly to probe the deaths of these two top UN Officials: Dag Hammarskjöld and Bernt Carlsson."

Background

David Lea was educated at Farnham Grammar School and studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Economics. He gained the rank of officer between 1955 and 1957 in the service of the Royal Horse Artillery.

Hammarskjöld Inquiry Trust

Lord Lea of Crondall is the Chairman of the Hammarskjöld Inquiry Trust which was established in 2012 as the Enabling Committee to raise and administer funds to support the independent work of the Hammarskjöld Commission.

On 9 September 2013, the Hammarskjöld Commission's report was published. The report recommended that the United Nations should launch a new investigation into the plane crash which killed UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, stating that the possibility that the plane was attacked from above, or that it was forced down due to threats, should be "taken seriously, despite everything".

The Hammarskjöld Commission, which comprised four senior lawyers including Swedish diplomat Hans Corell, appealed to the United States to declassify documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) including radio communications and intercepts of war planes in the area at the time. The Commission added that it was a "near certainty" that all air traffic information around the airport was "followed and recorded by the NSA and possibly even the CIA". Access to such files has been denied by the NSA due to the "top secret" classification, something the Commission wants to be lifted to further the investigation.

A recent book by the author Susan Williams entitled "Who Killed Hammarskjöld?" also argued that the plane was brought down, and prompted the diplomat's nephew Knut Hammarskjöld to call for the new inquiry.

Trades Union Congress

Lea joined the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in 1964 as a research officer. Whilst at the TUC, he was secretary of the TUC-Labour Party Liaison Committee from 1972 to 1994, a member of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth from 1974 until 1979, the Delors Committee on Economic and Social Concepts in the Community 1977 to 1979, the Kreisky Commission on Unemployment in Europe 1986–89, a member of the Working Party on Economic and Social Concepts in the EEC and a Vice President of the European TUC. From 1978 until 1999 he was Assistant General Secretary.

Publications

David Lea wrote the book "Trade Unionism" published in 1966, the book "The Multinational Enterprise" published in 1971, the book "Industrial Democracy" published in 1974 and the book "Keynes Plus: a participatory economy" published in 1979.

Honours and awards

David Lea was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1978 New Year Honours, and was invested as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (F.R.S.A.) in 1993. Lea was made a Labour Life peer taking the title Baron Lea of Crondall, of Crondall in the County of Hampshire on 20 July 1999.

External links

• http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peer/lord_lea_of_crondall
• http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/100366
• http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansrd/ldallfiles/peers/lord_hansard_1443_home.html

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