Background and Early Political Career
Robert Andrew Wales was born in Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire, Scotland on 18 January 1955. He spent his childhood in Kilmarnock; attending the Kilmarnock Academy High School. He went on to study at Glasgow University and graduated with a BSc in Chemistry.
Wales joined the Labour party in 1970, aged 15. He served as Chair of Glasgow University Labour Club 1975-76. He chaired Scottish Labour Students (SOLS) 1976-77. SOLS members are renowned for their wresting back control of the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS) from the ‘Militant Tendency’ in 1975. Wales was part of the contingent of Scottish Labour Students which famously took the ‘ice pick express’ (a bus covered in posters of an ice pick – the weapon used to kill Trotsky) to the 1976 NOLS Conference at Lancaster University.
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