Denis Healey
Denis Winston Healey, the Rt Hon. the Lord Healey CH MBE, was born on 30 August 1917. He is a retired British Labour politician who served as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979. He was a Member of Parliament for over 40 years (from 1952 until his retirement in 1992) and is the last surviving member of the cabinet formed by Harold Wilson after the Labour Party's victory in the 1964 general election.
Political Career[edit]
Healey was elected to the House of Commons as MP for Leeds East at a by-election in February 1952 with a majority of 7,000 votes, after the incumbent MP Major James Milner left the Commons to accept a peerage. When Labour won the 1964 election Healey served throughout the government as Secretary of State for Defence. He remained defence secretary for the party's near six years of Government and was Shadow Defence Secretary after Labour's defeat in June 1970. Healey was appointed Shadow Chancellor in April 1972 after Roy Jenkins resigned in a row over the European Economic Community (Common Market). Healey became Chancellor of the Exchequer in March 1974 after Labour's narrow election victory. He was Shadow Foreign Secretary during most of the 1980s, a job he coveted. He was retained in the shadow cabinet by Neil Kinnock, who succeeded Foot after the disastrous 1983 general election, when the Tories bolstered their majority and Labour suffered their worst general election result in decades. His views on nuclear weapons were at variance with the unilateral nuclear disarmament policy of the party. After the 1987 general election, he retired from the Shadow Cabinet, and in 1992 stood down after 40 years as a Leeds MP. In that year he received a life peerage as Baron Healey, of Riddlesden in the County of West Yorkshire. Healey is regarded by some – especially in the Labour Party – as "the best Prime Minister we never had". Denis Healey is a founder member of the Bilderberg Group.
Education[edit]
Lord Healey graduated from Bradford Grammar School, Balliol College, Oxford (Double First in Greats).
