Jim Connelly

[Steffan Lewis]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zgm4qwDG5G94Se_UvSt2I-hulk1MNG0x5UIdkWGRyuE/edit?usp=sharing

I'll add a more detailed narrative bio at a later point.

[Steffan Lewis]

Jim Connelly narrative bio:

Born into a working class family during the height of the Second World War - Jim’s father was a reserved worker in the South Yorkshire Coalfied - Jim Connelly’s youth traced with the ascent and peak of the trade union movement and labour politics in Britain. Some of Jim’s earliest memories are of social events his father took him to at his local Lodge and accompanying his father canvas to re-elect the Labour Government in 1950 and 1951. In 1959, Jim ended his schooling in order to work on the railways, mostly performing grunt work, where he naturally became very active in the TGWU. 

 

Not long after becoming active in the TGWU, Jim found himself in minor leadership roles, acting as union representative in handling grievances or negotiating with management as well as serving as a TGWU representative at Labour Party conferences. Jim found himself on the Left of both his trade union and the Labour Party, and was active in both the effort to elect Jack Jones the TGWU General Secretary and the fight to democratize Labour, to give unions and CLPs the ability to select Leadership and set the party’s policy. Jim was named a special advisor to Jack Jones upon the latter’s election as TGWU General Secretary in 1969, where he focused on matters concerning the trade union’s relationship with the Labour Party. In that capacity, Jim formed lifelong relationships with stalwarts of the British Left such as Eric Heffer and Tony Benn.

 

After Jones’s retirement as General Secretary, Jim served in various mid-level leadership roles within the union, where he focused on fighting for the TGWU to maintain Jones’s legacy of strong connections to social movements, both domestic and international, like the Anti-Apartheid Movement. Following the tragic death of his good friend Bob Cryer in 1994, Jim won selection as the Labour candidate to replace him in the Bradford South By-Election, campaigning on continuing Cryer’s legacy of socialism and Euroscepticism. Following his victory, Jim found his home on the backbenches with his SCG comrades, like James Byrne, Peter Brichford, Tony Benn, and Dennis Skinner. An unabashed critic of Tony Blair and New Labour, Connelly vehemently opposed the Iraq War and New Labour’s attempts to cut welfare and other social services and was active in the Stop the War and anti-privatisation movements. He was a vocal backer of John McDonnell’s attempted leadership campaign to replace Blair and in 2006, was one of a dozen Labour MPs to sign a letter calling for a full inquiry into the Iraq War.