Alan Beith

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Image:Alan Beith.jpg The Right Honourable Alan James Beith (born April 20, 1943) British politician, and the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Alan Beith was born in 1943 in Cheshire into a working class Tory family. He was educated at The King's School, Macclesfield, Balliol College, Oxford, where he received a BLitt degree, and at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he mastered in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1964.

In 1966 he began his career as a politics lecturer at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. In 1969 he was elected a councillor on the Hexham District Council. In 1970 he was elected to the Corbridge Town Council. He contested the 1970 General Election at Berwick-upon-Tweed but was defeated heavily by the Conservative MP Anthony Lambton.

In 1973 Alan Beith was elected to the North Tynedale District Council, and later in the year Anthony Lambton resigned as the MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed in great scandal. At the by-election later that year, Beith secured a victory and was elected as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed on November 8, 1973 by just 57 votes.

The next year was to prove a major campaigning act for the now Alan Beith MP, just three months after his by-election victory he had to face his electors again at the February 1974 General Election, his majority increased to 443. Less than a year after he was elected for the first time, Beith had to face his constituents for a third time at the October 1974 General Election and his majority reduced back to double figures at just 73.

He became a Member of the BBC Advisory Council in 1974 and held the position until 1984. On the election of David Steel as the Leader of the Liberal Party in 1976, Alan Beith became the Liberal Chief Whip in the Commons. After the 1983 General Election he also became the Liberal spokesman for Constitutional Affairs. He was elected as the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party in 1985, in both cases alongside his duties as Chief Whip.

After the United Kingdom general election, 1987, Beith concentrated his efforts as the spokesman on Treasury Affairs and stood down as the Chief Whip after eleven years in post. In 1988 the Liberal Party joined with the Social Democratic Party finally to produce the new party of the Liberal Democrats. Beith stood against Paddy Ashdown in the first leadership election, an election that Ashdown won by a large margin.

Alan Beith was the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democats from after the 1992 General Election under Paddy Ashdown until 2003, and became a Member of the Privy Council in 1992. In 1994 he became the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Affairs spokesman, a job which he carried on under Charles Kennedy. After the 2001 General Election he briefly became the spokesman on the Lord Chancellor's Department, but left the front bench in 2002.

Since leaving the front bench he has chaired both the Lord Chancellor's Department and Constitutional Affairs Select Committees.

He has been Berwick-upon-Tweed's MP since 1973 and is now the longest current serving Liberal Democrat MP and only current Liberal Democrat MP to have experience of the House of Commons in the 1970s. As such he has been the MP for the northernmost English constituency for over 30 years. He is a Methodist, who was married in 1965 to Barbara Ward and they had a son and a daughter. His wife died in 1998 and he remarried Diana Maddock in 2001. He is president of the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum.

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External links

Template:Start box {{incumbent succession box 

 | title  = MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed
 | start  = 1973
 | before = Anthony Lambton

}} Template:End boxsv:Alan Beith

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