Early Career
He worked for the BBC from 1969 to 1977, including as a newsreader and reporter on Wolverhampton Wanderers for BBC Radio Birmingham. He changed his surname to his mother's maiden name at the request of his employers. He was fired by the BBC after using a fake name to call the radio phone-in programme he worked on at the time. During the call, MacShane accused leading Conservative politician Reginald Maudling of being a crook, with the MP threatening to sue as a result.
MacShane supported the Solidarity trade union in Poland, where he was arrested in 1982 for attending a demonstration and deported. He became an activist for the National Union of Journalists and later its president 1978 to 1979. He was policy director of the International Metal Workers' Federation from 1980 to 1992, and he completed a PhD in international economics at Birkbeck, University of London in 1990.
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“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
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