Political Career
He was elected as a councillor to the City of Leeds Council in 1987, stepping down eleven years later in 1998. He was elected as the chairman of the Leeds West Constituency Labour Party in 1987, and he contested Leeds North East at the 1992 General Election but was defeated by the sitting Conservative MP Timothy Kirkhope by 4,244 votes, gaining a 5.9% swing from the Conservative Party to Labour.
Despite having achieved the highest Labour swing in the North of England, Hamilton's local constituency voted (by a margin of one vote) in favour of an all-women shortlist. At the time Hamilton was quoted by The Independent as saying:
| “ | For six years, I was chair of Leeds city council's equal opportunities committee. Equal ops was my life. And to find that, as far as the Labour Party is concerned, equal opportunity now means positive discrimination, came as a real shock to me. I am told that my generation of men will just have to stand back and make way for women. And I understand why certain women in the Party have pushed that policy. But I think they're wrong. What they don't seem to take on board is that I've only got one life, too. I didn't choose my time on earth any more than I chose my sex or my race. And I really mean it when I say that being kept out of a job just because I'm a man offends me as deeply as being kept out of a job just because I'm a Jew. | ” |
On the decision to adopt an all-women shortlist, Hamilton was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying, "I reluctantly accepted the decision, made by a narrow margin, for a women-only shortlist. But I felt the wisest choice would have been somebody local." Leeds North-East made its selection on 1 July 1995, selecting Liz Davies, a barrister and councillor in the London Borough of Islington. Davies defeated four local women, two of whom were Leeds city councillors. Her selection was vetoed by the National Executive Committee, allegedly for her left-wing politics; unhappy with the situation, opponents took out an unsuccessful private prosecution against Hamilton under the Companies Act in connection with his printing business.
He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1997 General Election when he defeated Kirkhope in a re-run at Leeds North East by 6,959 votes and has remained the MP there since. He made his maiden speech on 23 June 1997, in which he explained that his constituency stretches from the inner-city Leeds district of Chapeltown all the way out to Harewood House, the stately home of the Earls of Harewood.
He is said to be the first MP to hold a virtual surgery for constituents: local people go to his constituency office while he is in London, and converse via webcam.
Hamilton is a signatory of the Euston Manifesto and the Henry Jackson Society.
Read more about this topic: Fabian Hamilton
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