Michael Welsh | |
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Member of Parliament for Don Valley |
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In office 3 May 1979 – 9 June 1983 |
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Preceded by | Richard Kelley |
Succeeded by | Martin Redmond |
Member of Parliament for Doncaster North |
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In office 9 June 1983 – 9 April 1992 |
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Preceded by | Constituency Created |
Succeeded by | Kevin Hughes |
Personal details | |
Born |
Doncaster |
23 November 1926
Died | 20 January 2012 Carcroft, Doncaster |
(aged 85)
Nationality | British |
Political party | Labour |
Michael Collins Welsh (23 November 1926 – 20 January 2012) was a coal miner and Labour Party politician from South Yorkshire in England. He sat in the House of Commons from 1979 to 1992.
Welsh was educated at elementary schools, at the University of Sheffield and at Ruskin College in Oxford. He was a local councillor from 1962, and was elected at the 1979 general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Labour safe seat of Don Valley, sponsored by National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). In 1981, when the NUM in Yorkshire began to demand that its five sponsored MPs should support the unions' policies, Welsh was reported by The Times as the only one who was sufficiently left-wing to retain the union's support. In the Labour Party Deputy leadership election in 1981, Welsh voted for the left-wing candidate Tony Benn in both ballots.
During the Falklands War in May 1982, Welsh was one of 69 MPs who signed an Early Day Motion calling for an immediate halt to hostilities.
After boundary changes he was returned at the 1983 general election as MP for the new Doncaster North constituency. He was nominated in November that year to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and in July 1985 he was one of four Labour MPs on the committee who rejected the committee's finding that there were military grounds for the sinking during the Falklands War of the Argentinian warship General Belgrano. The four MPs (Welsh, Dennis Canavan, Ian Mikardo and Nigel Spearing) published a minority report which accused the government of obstructing the committee by "suppression of evidence and giving of false evidence" and called for a further enquiry.