Peter John Law (1 April 1948
– 25 April 2006) was a Welsh
politician.
Labour Co-operative AM and Independent MP
For most of his career Law sat as a
Labour Councillor and subsequently
Labour Co-operative Assembly Member (AM) for
Blaenau
Gwent. Latterly he sat as an independent
Member of Parliament (MP) and AM for
the same constituency.
Background
Born in
Abergavenny
, Law ran a General
Store and became a councillor in Blaenau Gwent in 1974. He was
subsequently appointed chair of Gwent Healthcare
NHS Trust.
Political career
He was latterly a close ally of
Llew
Smith, MP for Blaenau Gwent from 1992, and was selected for the
constituency in the first elections to the
National Assembly for Wales in
1999, winning the seat easily. He was appointed to the cabinet of
Alun Michael as Assembly Secretary for
Local Government and Housing, but lost his post in a cabinet
reshuffle in 2000 by successor
First Minister for Wales Rhodri Morgan.
When Morgan formed a coalition government with the
Liberal Democrats, Peter Law made no
secret of his opposition to the decision and was not retained in
the administration. He became a vociferous backbench critic and
following the
2003 election
stood as candidate for the Deputy Presiding Officer of the Welsh
Assembly. However, the Labour AMs voted instead for
John Marek who was an Independent AM, thereby
ensuring that an opposition member was in the Chair and unable to
vote against the Welsh Assembly Government.
Law left the Labour Party in protest at the use of an
all-woman shortlist in selecting the
candidate for the
general election,
which was used to replace the retiring Llew Smith.
Law believed all-woman
shortlists were being selectively imposed on local parties only
where a leadership supported male candidate was unlikely to be
selected, citing the example of Ed Balls
and Pat McFadden
as new leadership-supported male candidates, and noting that use of
all-woman shortlists had been stopped in Scotland
.
Smith had
enjoyed a majority of 19,313, making it the safest parliamentary
seat in Wales. Law
won the seat with 58.2% of the vote, defeating Labour candidate
Maggie
Jones, and gaining a majority of 9,121 votes.
Law followed just a handful of previous MPs and AMs in Wales who
won the same constituency as both a party candidate
and an
independent, following
S. O. Davies who was MP
for Merthyr
Tydfil
from 1934 until his death in 1972, who was
deselected by the local Labour
Party on grounds of age prior to the 1970 general election
but ran against the official candidate as an independent and won;
and John Marek who remained AM for
Wrexham, later
forming his own party, Forward
Wales.
Law died
peacefully at home in Nantyglo
, aged 58,
suffering from a recurrent brain tumour
first diagnosed during the 2005 election campaign. As a
result of his death, there were
by-elections in Blaenau
Gwent for both the UK Parliament and the Welsh Assembly seats.
In the by-elections Law's former agent,
Dai Davies, won the election to
Law's former Westminster seat, while his widow
Trish Law succeeded him in the Welsh Assembly.
Both stood under the banner of the
Blaenau Gwent People's Voice
Group.
His widow has claimed that he was offered a peerage not to stand
against Labour in Blaenau Gwent in 2005, an allegation
categorically denied by Labour, and also denied by Law himself in
an interview from late 2005. The claim had considerable media
impact because of the ongoing
Cash for
Peerages police investigation, although the police announced on
9 May that they would not be investigating
it.
References
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4952376.stm
See also
List of
United Kingdom MPs with the shortest service
External links
Offices held
Wikis
Map
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