Dennis Healey 98 RIP

[wanderer]

enis Winston Healey, Baron Healey,[2] CH, MBE, PC (30 August 1917 – 3 October 2015) was a British Labour politician who served as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979.

He was a Member of Parliament for 40 years (from 1952 until his retirement in 1992) and was the last surviving member of the cabinet formed by Harold Wilson after the Labour Party's victory in the 1964 general election.

A major figure in the party, he was twice defeated in bids for the party leadership. Healey became well known for his trademark bushy eyebrows and his creative turns of phrase. During an interview with Nick Clarke on BBC Radio 4, Denis Healey was the first Labour politician to publicly declare his wish for the Labour leadership to pass to Tony Blair in 1994, following the death of Labour leader John Smith.
Healey was born in Mottingham, Kent, but moved with his family to Keighley in the West Riding of Yorkshire when he was five.[3] His middle name was in honour of Winston Churchill.[4]

Healey was one of two siblings. His father was an engineer who worked his way up from humble origins studying at night school. His paternal grandfather was a tailor from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. Healey was educated at Bradford Grammar School. In 1936 he won an exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford – to read Greats – where he was involved in Labour politics, although he was not active in the Oxford Union Society. At Oxford Healey joined the Communist Party in 1937 during the Great Terror but left in 1940 after the fall of France. Also at Oxford, Healey met future Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath (then known as "Teddy"), whom he succeeded as president of Balliol College Junior Common Room, and who was to be a lifelong friend and political rival. Healey achieved a double first degree, awarded in 1940.

Second World War[edit]
After graduation, he served in the Second World War with the Royal Engineers, in the North African campaign, the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Italian campaign, and was the military landing officer for the British assault brigade at Anzio. He was made an MBE in 1945.[5] Leaving the service with the rank of major after the war – he declined an offer to remain as a lieutenant colonel – Healey joined the Labour Party. Still in uniform, Healey gave a strongly left-wing speech to the Labour Party conference in 1945, shortly before the general election in which he narrowly failed to win the Conservative-held seat of Pudsey and Otley, doubling the Labour vote but losing by 1,651 votes.[6] Following this, he was made secretary of the international department of the Labour Party, becoming a foreign policy adviser to Labour leaders and establishing contacts with socialists across Europe. From 1948 to 1960 he was a councillor of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and of the International Institute for Strategic Studies from 1958 until 1961. He was a member of the Fabian Society executive from 1954 until 1961.

[Groucho]

enis Winston Healey, Baron Healey,[2] CH, MBE, PC (30 August 1917 – 3 October 2015).

If you are going to cut and paste from Wikipedia at least get it right - name wrong twice before the end of the first sentence...

[sophie]

I consider he was a far better service man than he was a politician. People are free to disagree with me if it suits them. He was never going to be leader of the Labour party due to the fact he hadn't the hutzpah it needed at the time although is eyebrows had a life of their own.