Peter Mandelson - Early Life

Early Life

Peter Mandelson was born in London in 1953, the son of Mary Joyce (née Morrison) and George Norman Mandelson. His father's family was Jewish, and his father was the advertising manager at The Jewish Chronicle. On his mother's side, he is the grandson of Margaret (Kent) and Herbert Morrison, the London County Council leader and Labour cabinet minister. He was educated at Hendon County Grammar School 1965–72. In 1966 he appeared on stage with the local amateur theatre group, the Hampstead Garden Suburb Dramatic Society as the eponymous lead in The Winslow Boy.

He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Catherine's College, Oxford (1973–1976) and in the late 1970s, became Chair of the British Youth Council. As Chair of the BYC, he was a delegate in 1978 to the Soviet-organised World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana, Cuba, where with several future Labour cabinet colleagues, he with Hilary Barnard, future IUSY President, and Trevor Phillips successfully frustrated agreement on a distorted Soviet text on youth in the capitalist countries.

In his teenage years, he was also a member of the Young Communist League. but was a member of the Oxford University Labour Club delegation to the December 1975 NOLS Conference when the entryist Trotskyist Militant tendency lost control of NOLS. He was elected to Lambeth Borough Council in September 1979, but retired in 1982, disillusioned with the state of Labour politics.