Merlyn Rees

Merlyn Rees, later Merlyn Merlyn-Rees, Baron Merlyn-Rees, PC (December 18, 1920 – January 5, 2006) was a British Labour party Member of Parliament from 1963 until 1992, having served as Home Secretary.

Biography

Born at Cilfynydd, near Pontypridd, South Wales, and educated at Harrow Weald Grammar School, and Goldsmiths College where he was president of the Students' union from 1939 to 1941. He served in the RAF the University of Nottingham Air Squadron during World War II, becoming a squadron leader at 25. He attended the London School of Economics where he received BSc(Econ) and MSc(Econ) and. He was appointed schoolmaster at his old school in Harrow in 1949, teaching economics and history. He taught for eleven years, during which time he was three times an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate for Harrow East. He was a member of the Institute of Education at the University of London from 1959 to 1962. At a by-election in 1963, he stood successfully as the Labour candidate for Leeds South, succeeding Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, who had died in office. He held the seat until he stepped down from the House of Commons at the 1992 general election. The constituency was renamed as Morley and Leeds South in 1983. He was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from March 1974 until September 1976, when he was appointed Home Secretary. For two years before the Labour government came to power in 1974 he had been Labour Party spokesman on Northern Ireland. Rees wrote of his views on Northern Ireland in: Northern Ireland: a Personal Perspective (Methuen, London, 1985 ISBN 0-413-52590-2). When he retired from the House of Commons in 1992, he was created a life peer as Baron Merlyn-Rees, of Morley and South Leeds in the County of West Yorkshire and of Cilfynydd in the County of Mid Glamorgan and entered the House of Lords (having changed his name by deed poll to Merlyn Merlyn-Rees to allow his title to be Merlyn-Rees rather than Rees) (see [1]). He was president of the Video Standards Council from 1990 and the first Chancellor of the University of Glamorgan from 1994 to 2002. He suffered injuries in a number of falls, and failing to recover from these, fell into a coma, dying at the age of 85. He was survived by his wife Colleen and three sons.

Offices held

References

• BBC News (5 January 2006). “Peer's roots in 'gifted' street”. Retrieved 15 January 2006.
• ”Belfast years remembered for vacillation in face of loyalist strike.” (5 January 2006). The Irish Times p14.
• Wakefieldtoday.co.uk.”Your Online Guide to Yorkshire People”. Retrieved 15 January 2006

External links

• Merlyn Rees (The Second World War Experience Centre)
• Catalogue of the Merlyn-Rees papers at the Archives Division of the London School of Economics.