Parliamentary Career
Davies as a Treasury Minister in James Callaghan's Government. He was seen as a Eurosceptic, and he opposed the National Assembly for Wales.
Davies served in a number of posts when Labour formed the Official Opposition after the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, including Shadow Secretary of State for Wales in Michael Foot's Shadow Cabinet and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in Neil Kinnock's. Like his predecessor as Shadow Defence Secretary, John Silkin, he resigned from the front bench in June 1988 in protest at Neil Kinnock's management style. The trigger for his resignation was Neil Kinnock's announcement, without reference to Davies or the Shadow Cabinet, of a change in Labour's defence policy from unilateral nuclear disarmament to multilateral nuclear disarmament then back to unilateral nuclear disarmament over a period of three days. He made an unsuccessful bid for the Labour Party deputy leadership in 1983.
He was one of the few Labour MPs with ministerial experience remaining after the 1997 landslide that returning Labour to power after 18 years in opposition.
He stood down at the 2005 general election, and was replaced by Nia Griffith.
Read more about this topic: Denzil Davies
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)