Michael Martin (politician)

Encyclopedia : M : MI : MIC : Michael Martin (politician)

Michael John Martin MP, (born 3 July 1945) is the current Speaker of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom.

Early life

Martin was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1945, the son of a merchant seaman and a school cleaner. He attended St. Patrick's Boys School in Anderston, before leaving at the age of 15 to become an apprentice sheet-metal worker. He became involved in the Sheet Metal Workers trade union and joined the Labour Party when he was 21. He later worked in the Rolls-Royce plant at Hillington, and was an AUEW shop steward from 1970 to 1974.

In 1973, Martin was elected as a councillor on Glasgow Corporation — a position he retained until he was elected to the UK Parliament. He also served as a trade union organiser with the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) between 1976 and 1979. He was elected as MP for Glasgow Springburn in the 1979 general election, and was associated with the right-wing of the party. He was a supporter of Roy Hattersley and Denis Healey, whom he served as a Parliamentary Private Secretary from 1980 until 1983.

Speakership

He served as Chairman of the Scottish Grand Committee from 1987 to 1997, and also sat on the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen. In 1997 he was appointed as First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Deputy Speaker). Martin was elected Speaker on 23 October 2000, succeeding Betty Boothroyd. He is the first Roman Catholic to hold the office of Speaker in either the Parliament of Great Britain or the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

He has been an active Speaker, trying to raise the tone of debate in the Commons; he has on occasion, during Prime Minister's Questions, stopped the Prime Minister from criticising the policies of the opposition. Martin's strong Glaswegian accent led to his being nicknamed Gorbals Mick by some people from outwith Scotland, although the nickname is inaccurate, as Martin is from the Anderston and Springburn areas of Glasgow and has never lived in the Gorbals.

In the 2005 general election, he stood in the new constituency of Glasgow North East. There is an imperfectly-observed convention that the UK-side parties (Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats) do not stand candidates against a Speaker who is seeking re-election, although other parties, including the Scottish National Party, have never observed this pact.

On 26 February 2006 it was announced that Martin had received treatment at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary for a heart condition and would be absent from his duties for some weeks. [link] He returned to the Chair on 18 April.

His son Paul Martin has been the MSP for the Glasgow Springburn constituency since 1999.

External links

|- style="text-align: center;"

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.