Background
McLoughlin was born in Stafford, the son and grandson of coal miners. He was educated at the Cardinal Griffin Roman Catholic School in Cannock, Staffordshire, and Staffordshire College of Agriculture at Rodbaston College. From 1974 he worked for five years as a farm worker and after 1979 worked underground at the Littleton Colliery in Cannock. He was a member of the National Union of Mineworkers, he became an industrial representative for the National Coal Board's Western Area Marketing Department. Although a member of the NUM he broke ranks during the 1984 miners strike and later came to national attention when he stood up at the Conservative Party Conference to announce that he was a working miner. His career within the Coal Board was fast tracked to avoid a hostile reaction on the return of fellow miners following the end of the strike, rising from belt attendant to Area Marketing.
Read more about this topic: Patrick McLoughlin
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)