Harry Barnes

Template:Northern Ireland badgeHarold (Harry) Barnes (born 22 July, 1936) is an English politician, and was MP for North East Derbyshire from 1987 to 2005. He is a member of the Labour Party.

Before entering parliament, Barnes was a member of the Independent Labour Party's successor organisation, Independent Labour Publications. As an MP, he joined joined a supporters group entitled 'Friends of the ILP'.

Born in Easington, County Durham, elected to Parliament in the 1987 election, Barnes was on the left on many issues, a member of the Left Labour Socialist Campaign Group who voted against Tony Blair's leadership. Unlike other members of the SCG he was not an advocate of the Troops Out Movement (which advocated withdrawal of British forces from Northern Ireland) but supported the British presence there. He also supported the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999. Although initially opposed to the invasion of Iraq he later abandoned the anti-war movement and set up Labour Friends of Iraq with Ann Clywd.

Harry Barnes stepped down at the May 2005 general election.

Northern Ireland

Barnes was close to those seeking to promote the unionist leader David Trimble in the Labour Party. In 1996 his parliamentary assistant Gary Kent was one of the organisers of the New Dialogue fringe meeting which provided David Trimble with an entrée to the Labour Party conference.

Trimble knew several of the group's leading figures including Gary Kent, a parliamentary researcher for the Labour MP Harry Barnes who had had a long interest in Northern Ireland affairs. Kent had organised several fringe meetings on Ulster at Labour conferences, to which speakers from the Orange Order, the Ulster Unionist Party and even the parties connected to loyalist paramilitaries had been invited. His aim had been to present the other side of the Northern Ireland story to counter the dominance of the pro-republican/nationalist tendency within Labour. However, until 1996 no Unionist leader had ever spoken at a Labour conference.

Pro-war left links

Barnes is on the advisory board of Democratiya and he is joint President of Labour Friends of Iraq.

Career and Connections

Education

• Easington Colliery Secondary Modern School
• Ryhope Grammar School
• Ruskin College, Oxford (Diploma in economics and political science 1962)
• Hull University (BA philosophy and political studies 1965).

Non-political career

• Railway clerk 1952-54, 1956-60
• Adult student 1960-65
• Lecturer: in British government North Notts College of Further Education 1965-66
• in political studies and industrial relations Sheffield University 1966-87
• Member, National Administrative Council of Independent Labour Publications 1977-80, 1982-85
• Director, Mature Matriculation Courses 1984-87 (Sheffield University).

Connections

• Labour Campaign for Peace and Progress in Ireland
• Gary Kent
• New Dialogue

Links and Publictions

Publications

• The public face of Militant. by Harry Barnes Published in 1982, I.L.P. Square One Publications (Leeds)
• For peace, democracy and class politics in Northern Ireland by Harry Barnes Published in 1990, The Author (s.l) Pagination: 4p. ;

External links

• Three Score Years And Ten (Personal blog since Barnes' 70th birthday)