Jack Ashley, Baron Ashley of Stoke

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Jack Ashley, Baron Ashley of Stoke, CH PC (born 6 December 1922), is a Labour member of the House of Lords.

Ashley was educated at elementary school. He worked in the chemical process industry and as a crane driver and was a shop steward in the Chemical Workers' Union, a union of which he was the youngest executive member. He served in the Army and then won a scholarship to study at Ruskin College, Oxford, continuing his studies at Caius College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society. He worked as a research worker for the National Union for General and Municipal Workers. He later worked as a television producer for the BBC. He served on Widnes Borough Council as a councillor from 1946.

Ashley contested Finchley in 1951 without success. He was elected as Labour Member of Parliament for Stoke on Trent South in 1966. At the age of 45 he became profoundly deaf as a result of complications of a routine ear operation. He was the UK's first totally deaf MP. He became a tireless campaigner for the disabled, especially the deaf and blind, and won broad cross-party sympathy, support and respect in parliament for his approach.

Ashley retired from the House of Commons and was made a Life Peer in 1992.

His daughter, Jackie Ashley, is a journalist.