Bryan Charles Gould, CNZM (born 11 February 1939 in New Zealand) is a former United Kingdom politician. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 to 1979, and again from 1983 to 1994. He was a member of the Labour Party's Shadow Cabinet from 1986 to 1994, and stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the party in 1992.
Gould currently holds a number of positions including director at TVNZ.
Gould was a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford from 1962. After completing a degree in Law with first-class honours, he joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1964. He then returned to Oxford as a tutorial Fellow in Law at Worcester College alongside Francis Reynolds.
Gould became Labour MP for Southampton Test in October 1974 and held the seat until 1979. He worked as a television journalist from 1979 to 1983, and was then elected as MP for Dagenham from 1983, holding the seat until he resigned on 17 May 1994.
Gould was a member of Neil Kinnock's Shadow Cabinet, serving first as Shadow Chief Secretary, then as spokesman on Trade and Industry, the Environment, and later on Heritage. In 1992 he founded the Full Employment Forum. Later that year he was defeated in the leadership election to succeed Kinnock after the general election, which Labour lost to the Conservative Party for the fourth election in succession. John Smith won the leadership contest,but Gould subsequently resigned from Smith's Shadow Cabinet in a dispute about policy on the European Union and departed from British politics.
In July 1994 he returned to New Zealand and became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Waikato, serving until his retirement in 2004. In this position Gould was instrumental in initiating The Great Race, a rowing race for Waikato University against international universities on the Waikato River. The Bryan Gould Cup for the woman's eights race is named after him.
Gould was awarded Companionship of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2003 for services to Education. In October 2006 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Waikato. He is a board member of TVNZ.
Bryan Gould's brother is Wayne Gould, best known for popularising Sudoku.
Famous quotes containing the words bryan and/or gould:
“Do you know I believe that [William Jennings] Bryan will force his nomination on the Democrats again. I believe he will either do this by advocating Prohibition, or else he will run on a Prohibition platform independent of the Democrats. But you will see that the year before the election he will organize a mammoth lecture tour and will make Prohibition the leading note of every address.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“A separation situation is different for adults than it is for children. When we were very young children, a physical separation was interpreted as a violation of our inalienable rights....As we grew older, the withdrawal of love, whether that meant being misunderstood, mislabeled or slighted, became the separation situation we responded to.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)