Dennis Skinner

Dennis Edward Skinner (born 11 February 1932) is a British former politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolsover from 1970 to 2019. He is a member of the Labour Party.
Known for his left-wing views and acerbic wit, he belonged to the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs. He was a member of Labour's National Executive Committee, with brief breaks, for thirty years, and was the chairman of the Committee in 1988–89. He was one of the longest serving members of the House of Commons and the longest continuously-serving Labour MP. He is a lifelong Eurosceptic.
Early life and career.
Born in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, Skinner is the third of nine children. His father Edward (Tony) Skinner was a coal miner who was sacked after the 1926 general strike, and his mother Lucy was a cleaner. In June 1942, at the age of 10, Skinner won a scholarship to attend Tupton Hall Grammar School after passing the eleven-plus a year early. In 1949, he went on to work as a coal miner at Parkhouse colliery, working there until its closure in 1962. He then worked at Glapwell colliery near Bolsover. In 1956 Skinner entered the Sheffield Star Walk, an amateur walking race, and finished second.
In 1964, at the age of 32, he became the youngest-ever president of the Derbyshire region of the National Union of Mineworkers. After working for 20 years as a miner, he became a member of Derbyshire County Council and a Clay Cross councillor in the 1960s. In 1967, he attended Ruskin College, after completing a course run by the National Union of Mineworkers at the University of Sheffield.
Parliamentary career.
In 1956, Skinner joined the Labour Party. He was chosen as Parliamentary Prospective candidate for Bolsover on 5 June 1969. Skinner was elected as MP for the then safe Labour seat of Bolsover at the 1970 general election and retained it until the 2019 general election. 
Due to his aggressive rhetoric, Skinner became known as the "Beast of Bolsover". Skinner recalls that he earned the nickname for his behaviour in a tribute debate in the Commons following the death of former Conservative Prime Minister Anthony Eden in 1977: "They were making speeches about the wonder of Anthony Eden, so I got up and talked about miners and people seriously injured and dead in the pits and the £200 given to the widow. There was booing and then all the Tories left and the papers had a go, some serious ones".
During his tenure in the Commons, Skinner would usually sit on the first seat of the front bench below the gangway in the Commons (known as the 'Awkward Squad Bench' because it is where rebel Labour Party MPs have traditionally sat) in a tweed jacket (whilst most other MPs wear suits) and signature red tie. In 2016, he stated that he had never sent an email and did not have a Twitter account.
Skinner was a strong supporter of the National Union of Mineworkers and their leader Arthur Scargill in the 1984-85 miners' strike. Skinner refused to accept a parliamentary salary in excess of miners' wages, and during the miners' strike he donated his wages to the NUM.
Skinner has voted for equalisation of the age of consent, civil partnerships, adoption rights for same-sex couples, to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, and for same-sex couples to marry, and has a strongly pro-choice stance on abortion. On 20 January 1989, he talked out a move to reduce the number of weeks at which an abortion can be legally performed in Britain by moving the writ for the Richmond by-election. On 7 June 1985, he talked out a bill by Enoch Powell which would have banned stem cell research by moving the writ for the by-election in Brecon and Radnor. Skinner later described this as his proudest political moment.
In 2000, Skinner denounced former ally Ken Livingstone, then serving as a Labour MP. Livingstone had failed to win the party's nomination to be a candidate for Mayor of London, and had then decided to run as an independent candidate instead, urging his supporters to help Green Party candidates get elected. Skinner said that Livingstone had betrayed Labour Party activists in his Brent East constituency, whom he described as having fought for him "like tigers" when his majority had been small: "He tells them he's going to be the Labour candidate, then he lies to them. To me that's as low as you can get". He contrasted Livingstone with the official Labour candidate, Frank Dobson, saying that Dobson was "a bloke and a half... not a prima donna ... not someone with an ego as big as a house". Skinner said Livingstone would "hit the headlines, but you'll never be able to trust him because he's broken his pledge and his loyalty to his party. The personality cult of the ego does not work down a coal mine and it does not work in the Labour Party".
Conversely, despite his left-wing views, Skinner for a long time had a positive relationship with Prime Minister Tony Blair, a leading figure on the right of the party, stemming from advice that Skinner gave Blair regarding public speaking. As late as February 2018, he described the Blair and Brown ministries as a "golden period" for the NHS. However, Skinner strongly criticised Blair in May 2019, after the former Prime Minister had advised pro-remain Labour supporters who felt that the party's line on Brexit was too ambiguous to vote for explicitly pro-remain parties in the 2019 European Parliament election; in the "Morning Star", Skinner described Blair as a "destructive force" who was "try(ing) to destroy the Labour Party so people keep talking about his reign" and stating that he "went into Iraq and destroyed himself. He helped David Cameron and Theresa May into power. You're talking about a man who made a mess of it."
In 2003, Skinner was among the quarter of Labour MPs who voted against the Iraq War; he later rebelled against the party line when he voted against government policy to allow terror suspects to be detained without trial for up to 90 days. In 2007, Skinner and 88 other Labour MPs voted against the Labour government's policy of renewing the Trident Nuclear Missile System.
Skinner supported David Miliband in the 2010 Labour leadership election, which was won by his brother Ed Miliband. In March 2011, he was one of 15 MPs who voted against British participation in NATO's Libya intervention. 
Skinner was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015. Shortly after Corbyn was elected as leader, Skinner was elected to Labour's National Executive Committee, on which he remained until October 2016. Skinner supported Corbyn, alongside the majority of Labour MPs, in voting against the extension of RAF airstrikes against ISIS in Syria in December 2015. Skinner voted for Britain to leave the European Union in June 2016 and favours outright abolition of the House of Lords. 
Following the retirement of Peter Tapsell in 2015, Skinner was one of the four longest-serving MPs, but did not become Father of the House, as two other MPs, who were also first elected in 1970, had been sworn in earlier on the same day and consecutively both held that position: Gerald Kaufman (2010-2017) and Kenneth Clarke (2017-2019). Skinner, the oldest sitting MP since 2017, stated that in any case he would not accept the honorific title. In 2019, with Clarke's impending retirement, the issue of Skinner becoming Father of the House resurfaced but was rendered moot, when Skinner lost his seat in the 2019 election.
Suspensions.
Skinner was suspended from Parliament on at least ten occasions, usually for unparliamentary language when attacking opponents. Notable infractions included:
Queen's Speech quips.
Known for his republican sentiments, Skinner regularly heckled during the annual Queen's Speech ceremony. He did this upon the arrival of Black Rod (the symbol of royal authority in the House of Lords) to summon MPs to hear the Queen's speech in the Lords' chamber. The best known, according to the "New Statesman" and other sources, are listed as follows:
"Nature of the Beast" documentary.
A documentary about Dennis Skinner sanctioned by him, "Nature of the Beast", was completed in 2017 by production company Shut Out The Light. The documentary traces Skinner's rise to political icon status and covers his working-class upbringing, his family influences and his hobbies away from "The Palace of Varieties". Skinner's four surviving brothers and several of his Bolsover constituents were interviewed for the documentary.
After parliament.
In 2020, Skinner endorsed Richard Burgon for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. 
On 6 May 2020, he was named honorary president of the Socialist Campaign Group.
In September 2020 Robb Johnson's song about Skinner, "Tony Skinner's Lad", topped the Amazon download chart.
Personal life.
In 1960, Skinner married Mary Parker. The couple have three children, all of whom attended his old school and graduated from the University of Manchester. He and his wife separated in 1989. His current partner is former researcher Lois Blasenheim.
In 1999 Skinner was diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer and subsequently had surgery to remove a malignant tumour. In 2003 he recovered from a double heart bypass operation. He underwent hip surgery in 2019. He was too ill to campaign in the 2019 General Election after he was hospitalised with a dangerous infection following the hip operation. He was not present at the count when he lost his seat.
Skinner's mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease prior to her death in the 1980s. Skinner sang to his late mother when she was diagnosed with the disease and was inspired by her ability to recall old songs. Since 2008 he has visited care homes in Derbyshire to sing to elderly patients with dementia.
Skinner is a supporter of Derby County Football Club and Derbyshire County Cricket Club.