Member of Parliament
He was an Oxfordshire County Councillor between 1973 and 1977, the youngest ever at the age of 21, and contested Southwark, Peckham in October 1982 at the Peckham by-election, 1982 which also brought Harriet Harman into public view.
Redwood became MP for Wokingham in 1987. He was selected two years earlier, when he joked to the selection committee, "I understand you have a California estate. Would you allow yourself to plant four Redwoods among you?". Previously had been the head of Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit in the early to mid 1980s. He was a backbencher for his first two years in Parliament. Thatcher wanted to make Redwood a Junior Minister straight away after the election, but David Waddington, then Chief Whip, told her that he needed experience as an MP and backbencher first, where he remained for the next two years. Redwood was made a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in July 1989 for Corporate Affairs at the Department of Trade and Industry. In November 1990, he was promoted to Minister of State. He oversaw the privatisation of the telecoms industry. Redwood has been labelled the "Pol Pot" of privatisation by the Yorkshire Post.
Redwood became Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities after the 1992 General Election where he successfully saw through the abolition of the Community Charge, known as the "Poll Tax", and its replacement, the Council Tax. Like Nigel Lawson, Redwood opposed the poll tax on the grounds that it was unworkable. He also opposed capping of local authorities, believing that it undermined local accountability.
Redwood has campaigned for wider share ownership among workers, so as to prevent them going on strike, because he believed that "Why would people go on strike if they were striking against themselves?".
Redwood holds conservative views on social matters, being opposed to attempts to reduce the age of consent for homosexuality in both 1994 and 1999. He voted for the reintroduction of capital punishment in 1988, 1990 and 1994, and voted in favour of keeping Section 28 (along with almost every other Conservative MP in a whipped vote) in November 2003.
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