Vladimir Derer
 Vladimir Derer    (politician) | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1919 2014 |
| Nationality | UK (Born: Czechoslovak) |
| Ethnicity | Jewish |
| Party | Labour |
Leader of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, dedicated to making the UK Labour Party more accountable to its members. | |
Vladimir Derer was a British political activist in the Labour Party, and on of the leaders of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, dedicated to making the UK Labour Party more accountable to its members.
Background
Vladimir Dérer was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia to Ivan Dérer, a lawyer and Social Democrat Minister in various governments, including Minister of Education and Minister of Justice, up to the 1938 Munich Agreement. Vladimir's father was involved in the anti-fascist resistance in Prague but was arrested and sent to Theresienstadt which was a hybrid concentration camp and ghetto established by the German SS during World War II. Ivan survived the war, becoming the Chair of the Czechoslovakian Labour Party, only then to be arrested and imprisoned by the Czech Communist Party after its consolidated control in 1948.
Vladimir escaped to Britain just before the start of the Second World War. Using his fathers’ contacts Vladimir was able to obtain a visa to allow him to stay in Britain. During the war Vladimir initially worked in an armaments factory then joined the army becoming an interpreter in prisoner of war camps. Following the war he worked as tourist guide, leading tours to Eastern Europe and also studied at the London School of Economics. It was there that Vladimir met his future wife Vera, a psychiatric social worker who later became a lecturer in sociology. They married in 1951.[1]
Activism
Although active in Trotskyist politics in the late 1940s, Derer became politically inactive until he and Vera joined the Labour Party in 1964. In the years that followed they became increasingly disillusioned in the way the Leadership and Labour Government operated and specifically angry at the way Harold Wilson, the Leader of the Opposition, had rejected a policy document drawn up by the Party's National Executive, which called for the state to take a controlling interest in 25 major companies, and which was passed at the 1973 Annual Conference.
For nearly four decades, from the 1960s until the 2000s, Derer was an important leader and strategist in the campaign to transform the Labour Party by making it more democratic and accountable to its members. He helped to form the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) in 1973 and was its secretary from 1974 until 2005. The CLPD is dedicated to introduce constitutional and rule changes and modernise the governance of the Party. Mandatory reselection of MPs and electoral college for the Leader were the most notable of many important democratic reforms implemented from the late 1970s onwards.[2]
