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Denzil Davies

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Leader
  
Prime Minister
  
Party
  
Preceded by
  
Leader
  
Name
  
Denzil Davies

Preceded by
  
Preceded by
  

Denzil Davies newsbbccoukmediaimages38126000jpg38126693

Role
  
British member of Parliament

Succeeded by
  
Martin O'Neill, Baron O'Neill of Clackmannan

Books
  
Booth: Residence, Domicile and Uk Taxation

Carrott confidential apology to denzil davies


David John Denzil Davies (born 9 October 1938) is a former British politician. He served for 35 years as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Llanelli for the Labour Party from 1970 to 2005, and is a member of the Privy Council.

Contents

Spirit of denzil davies doubting thomas


Early life

Davies was born in Cynwyl Elfed, Carmarthenshire. He attended Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School for Boys in Carmarthen, and then Pembroke College, Oxford, where he graduated with a First Class Honours BA in Law and Gray's Inn where he qualified as a barrister. He lectured in Law at Chicago University in 1963 and the University of Leeds from 1964. He practised at the tax bar between 1967 and 1975. Later he also practised in the field of personal injuries and served as a head of chambers.

Parliamentary career

Davies was a Treasury Minister in James Callaghan's Government. He was seen as a Eurosceptic, and he opposed the National Assembly for Wales.

Davies served in a number of posts when Labour formed the Official Opposition after the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, including Shadow Secretary of State for Wales in Michael Foot's Shadow Cabinet and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in Neil Kinnock's. Like his predecessor as Shadow Defence Secretary, John Silkin, he resigned from the front bench in June 1988 in protest at Neil Kinnock's management style. The trigger for his resignation was Kinnock's announcement, without reference to Davies or the Shadow Cabinet, of a change in Labour's defence policy, from unilateral nuclear disarmament to multilateral nuclear disarmament and then back to unilateral nuclear disarmament, over a period of three days. He made an unsuccessful bid for the Labour Party deputy leadership in 1983.

He was one of the few Labour MPs with ministerial experience remaining after the 1997 landslide that returned Labour to power after 18 years in opposition. As a backbencher Davies continued to oppose Britain's membership of the EU.

He stood down at the 2005 general election, and was replaced by Nia Griffith.

Personal life

He married Mary Ann Finlay in 1963. They have a son and daughter. They divorced in 1988. He married Ann Carlton in 1989.

Publications

Booth: Residence and Domicile in U.K. Taxation (successive editions) Maximise Damages, Minimise Taxes (1993) World Trade Organisation and GATT '94 The Galilean and the Goose - How Christianity converted the Roman Empire (2010 ISBN 978-0-9566489-0-7)

References

Denzil Davies Wikipedia