Dick Taverne

Dick Taverne     (politician)
Born	18 October 1928
Nationality	UK
Ethnicity	Dutch
Alma mater	Charterhouse School, Oxford University/Balliol College
Spouse	Janice Hennessey
Founder of	Sense about Science
Member of	Bilderberg/Steering committee, Königswinter/Speakers
Party	Labour (−1972), Democratic Labour, (1972–80), Social Democratic Party UK, (1981–88), Liberal Democrats (UK), (1988–)
UK politician with deep state connections, including the Bilderberg Steering committee. After politics he shilled for tobacco companies, GM food and Big Pharma by creating a "sound science" group, Sense about Science.  Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies In office 1970 - 1979 Sponsored by  UK/Financial Secretary to the Treasury  In office 13 October 1969 - 19 June 1970 Succeeded by Patrick Jenkin  Member of Parliament for Lincoln In office 8 March 1962 - 10 October 1974 Succeeded by Robin Corbett, Enoch Powell

Dick Taverne is a British politician of the Labour Party, Democratic Labour Party, Social Democratic Party (SDP) and finally the Liberal Democrats. A pro-EEC activist, he was a member of the Bilderberg steering committee

Taverne, who was sponsored by tobacco companies from the 1970s, helped British American Tobacco improve relations with its investors and beat European regulations on cigarettes. Burson-Marsteller , where Taverne was on the board, pitched the idea for a "sound science" group to Philip Morris in 1994. The concept was to create a network of scientists who would speak out against regulations that industrial spokespeople lacked the credibility to challenge. Taverne went on to found Sense about Science in 2002.

Education

Dick Taverne was born in Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies in 1928. His father was a senior Dutch Shell oil executive. The family moved to London in 1939 for his father to maintain Anglo-Dutch connection.

After attending Charterhouse School, Taverne first studied philosophy and history of antiquity at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. After a subsequent study of law, he was admitted to the bar as a barrister in 1954 and then worked as a lawyer.

Career

Taverne first began his political career in the Labour Party and unsuccessfully contested for a seat in the House of Commons for the first time at the general election on 8 October 1959 in the constituency of Wandsworth and Putney. On March 8, 1962, he was elected to the House of Commons for the first time in a by-election in the Lincoln constituency and kept the seat until his resignation on October 16, 1972.

He was part of a liberal section of the party, around Roy Jenkins and Bill Rogers.

During this time, he was first Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office in the government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson between 1966 and 1968 and then Minister of State at the Treasury until 1969 and then Financial Secretary to the Treasury until the end of Wilson's term in 1970.

After leaving the Labour Party in 1972 after disagreements with local party branch, who disagreed with his pro-European Economic Community views, he became a member of the Democratic Labour Party and was again elected as a member of the House of Commons at a by-election in the Lincoln constituency on 1 March 1973, to which he belonged until the general election on 10 October 1974.

He was director of the think-tank Institute for Fiscal Studies from 1970 until 1979, which was among others financed by British-American Tobacco.

Taverne was also a member of an international independent body to monitor the work of the European Commission in 1979.

Later, he also resigned from the Democratic Labour Party and became a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), founded in 1981, for which he unsuccessfully contested for a seat in the House of Commons in 1982 at by-elections in the constituencies of Southwark and Peckham, as well as the Lower House election on June 9, 1983 in the constituency of Dulwich. During this time he was a member of the National Committee of the SDP between 1981 and 1987 and at the same time chairman of the Public Policy Centre from 1983 to 1987.

Member of the Liberal Democrats and the House of Lords

In 1988 he finally became a member of the newly founded Liberal Democrats and was a member of their Federal Political Committee between 1989 and 1990.

In 1996, Dick Taverne was made a life peer with the title Baron Taverne, of Pimlico in the City of Westminster, and has been a member of the House of Lords since then.

Corporate shill

In the 1990s, Taverne' s consulting company, PRIMA Europe, helped British American Tobacco improve relations with its investors and beat European regulations on cigarettes. Taverne himself worked on the investors project: In an undated memo, PRIMA assured the tobacco company that "the work would be done personally by Dick Taverne," because he was well placed to interview industry opinion leaders and "would seek to ensure that industry’s needs are foremost in people’s minds."

During the same decade, Taverne sat on the board of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, which claimed Philip Morris as a client. The idea for a "sound science" group, made up of a network of scientists who would speak out against regulations that industrial spokespeople lacked the credibility to challenge, was pitched to Philip Morris in a 1994 memorandum.

In 2002 he founded Sense about Science, funded by Big Pharma and other biotech interests which according to itself has the objective of advancing public understanding of science and the evidence-based approach to scientific issues. It was created just in time for the UK's official GM Public Debate.

Organic farming is a billion-pound industry. To question claims made by the organic lobby is not just akin to doubting the virtues of motherhood, but to reveal indifference to the poisoning of the nation and the fate of the planet, perhaps even to be guilty of corruption by American multinationals and of support for George Bush. If people are worried about the effect of pesticides in farming on wildlife or human health, they should promote pesticide-resistant GM crops, which reduce their use.

Research on GM plants will bring particular benefits to health. More and greater benefits will come from the development of vaccines, antibodies and other pharmaceutical proteins in plants. Eventually they will be produced in bananas or lettuces or in tomato juice that can be ingested raw. They will not then have to be administered by injection by trained personnel.

Other activities

He is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a Distinguished Supporter of Humanists UK, as well as a vice-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group.

On 15 September 2010, Taverne, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in The Guardian, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK, among other things because the Pope opposed "the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries."

Taverne was interviewed in 2012 as part of The History of Parliament's oral history project.

In 2014, Taverne published his memoir, Against the Tide.

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1965	2 April 1965	4 April 1965	Italy Villa d'Este	The 14th Bilderberg meeting, held in Italy
Bilderberg/1967	31 March 1967	2 April 1967	United Kingdom St John's College (Cambridge) UK	Possibly the only Bilderberg meeting held in a university college rather than a hotel (St. John's College, Cambridge)
Bilderberg/1968	26 April 1968	28 April 1968	Canada Mont Tremblant	The 17th Bilderberg and the 2nd in Canada
Bilderberg/1973	11 May 1973	13 May 1973	Sweden Saltsjöbaden	The meeting at which the 1973 oil crisis appears to have been planned.

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References

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