Iain Duncan Smith
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George Iain Duncan Smith (born April 9 1954), often referred to as IDS, is a British politician. He is Member of Parliament for the constituency of Chingford and Woodford Green. He was leader of the Conservative Party from September 12 2001 to November 6 2003. He lost a vote of confidence on October 29 of that year and stepped down eight days later, with Michael Howard assuming the post.
On December 7 2005, Duncan Smith was appointed Chairman of the Social Justice Policy Group of the Conservative Party by David Cameron.
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[edit] Early life
Duncan Smith uses the name Iain Duncan Smith and is commonly referred to as IDS. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of the World War II Royal Air Force highly-decorated ace Group Captain W. G. G. Duncan Smith by his wife Pamela, a ballerina, whom he married in 1946. Pamela's maternal grandmother, Iain's great-grandmother, was Ellen Oshey, a Japanese woman. Iain Duncan Smith is therefore one-eighth Japanese. He is also a distant relative of George Bernard Shaw, the playwright and socialist.
Duncan Smith was educated at HMS Conway, a naval training school on the isle of Anglesey, where he played rugby union in the position of fly-half alongside Clive Woodward at centre. He also attended the elite Sandhurst military college. He joined the Scots Guards in 1975, with his six-year service including a spell in (then) Rhodesia and in Northern Ireland. Duncan Smith converted to Roman Catholicism as a teenager. He speaks Italian.
On leaving the Guards, he joined the Conservative Party and took up employment at The General Electric Company in 1981. He married Elizabeth "Betsy" Fremantle, daughter of the 5th Baron Cottesloe, in 1982. They have four children, who are being raised at least nominally Roman Catholic. Duncan Smith fought the safe Labour seat of Bradford West in the 1987 general election. At the following general election, he stood for his current seat (Chingford and Woodford Green) in the 1992 general election, succeeding Norman Tebbit on his retirement.
[edit] Rise to political prominence
A committed Eurosceptic, Duncan Smith was a constant thorn in the side of John Major's 1992-1997 government, doing his level best to disrupt Major's pro-European agenda at the time (something that would often be raised during his own leadership when calling for the party to unite behind him). Duncan Smith remained on the backbenches until 1997, when he was promoted by William Hague to the shadow cabinet as Shadow Social Security Secretary. He moved in 1999 to replace John Maples as Shadow Defence Secretary.
Hague resigned after Labour's reelection victory in the 2001 general election, and Duncan Smith was elected leader of the Conservatives over Kenneth Clarke on September 12 2001. His campaign attracted controversy when it emerged that Edgar Griffin, father of the British National Party leader Nick Griffin was on his campaign letterhead. The Duncan Smith campaign succesfully called for the expulsion of Griffin from the party and after elected to the leadership the Conservative Party suspended the right wing Conservative Monday Club and unsuccesfully attempted to expel the right wing activist Michael Keith Smith. Duncan Smith was initially seen as an outsider candidate, but his support was bolstered when Margaret Thatcher publicly announced her support. His eventual victory was also thought to have been helped by the fact that, in the final vote, his opponent was Kenneth Clarke, whose strong support for the European Union is known to put many party members off supporting him as a leadership candidate. Duncan Smith, being a strong Eurosceptic, was more popular.
As a mark of respect for the victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the announcement of his win was delayed until September 13 2001.
Duncan Smith is a Catholic convert, and his election led to criticism by some anti-Catholic groups of the supposed Catholicisation of British politics (Charles Kennedy, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats is a Catholic; Prime Minister Tony Blair is married to a Catholic, Cherie Booth, and regularly attends Mass in Westminster Cathedral). Britain has never had a Catholic Prime Minister, and the Catholic Relief Act 1829 makes it illegal for a Roman Catholic to directly or indirectly advise the Sovereign on appointments in the Church of England (one of the responsibilities of the Prime Minister is the selection of Church of England bishops for appointment by the Queen). However, in today's Britain the faith of the Prime Minister is not as important an issue as it once was.
In 2002, Michael Crick on the TV programme Newsnight caused some embarrassment when probing Duncan Smith's curriculum vitae, which had been in circulation for years, for example, being reproduced in the authoritative annual Dod's Guide to Parliament for the previous ten years. The CV claimed that he had attended the University of Perugia when he had in fact only attended a series of short private language courses across the road from the university, and a claim that he had attended the prestigious-sounding Durnsford College of Management turned out to refer to some weekend courses at GEC's staff college.
[edit] The downfall of Duncan Smith
Duncan Smith's election as party leader was overshadowed by the events of September 11, 2001. He proved not to be a particularly effective public speaker in the rowdy atmosphere of Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons. His seeming troubles with a "frog in his throat" throughout most of his two years as leader prompted Private Eye to refer to him incessantly as "Iain Duncan Cough". Few doubted Duncan Smith's decency and honesty. However, these virtues seemed insufficient for the electorate and opinion polls stubbornly refused to budge in the Conservatives' favour. There were continued rumours of discontent among his backbenchers, not dampened by his warning to his party in November 2002: "My message is simple and stark, unite or die".
The 2002 Conservative Party conference saw an attempt to turn Duncan Smith's lack of charisma with his much-quoted line, "never underestimate the determination of a quiet man". Unfortunately the line was as much derided as it was admired. The following year, his conference speech appeared to have abandoned this technique in favour of an aggressive hard-man act that few found convincing (even if the party members in the hall punctuated the speech with several ovations). The most remembered soundbite from the speech was his, "the quiet man is here to stay, and he's turning up the volume."
Duncan Smith stated in December 2002 that he intended to be party leader for a "very long time to come." This did little to quell the speculation in Westminster regarding his future. On 21 February 2003, The Independent newspaper published a story saying that a number of MPs were attempting to start the process of declaring a vote of confidence in Mr Duncan Smith. Apparently many Conservative MPs considered IDS to be unelectable.
Around this time, Duncan Smith became the subject of scathing criticism on the popular British satirical programme Have I Got News For You. In particular, Paul Merton insisted that he was in fact two people, Iain and Duncan Smith: the first identical twins jointly to lead a major British political party. When his full name of George Iain Duncan Smith was pointed out during one episode, Merton exclaimed, "There's three of 'em?". Meanwhile Ian Hislop commented on a picture of a cardboard cut-out of Duncan Smith. Hislop at that point was asked by comedian Ross Noble if it was a cardboard cut-out, to which the Private Eye editor replied: "Nope, that was the real thing".
These worries came to a head in October 2003. For a vote to occur, 15 percent of Conservative MPs (at this point 25 MPs) had to write to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee demanding the vote. On 26 October, amid mounting claims that the threshold of 25 was about to be reached, Duncan Smith made an appearance on television daring his opponents to show their hand by the evening of October 29, or to withdraw their challenge. He also stated that he would not step down if a vote was called. Iain Duncan Smith's demand that the 25 MPs write to the Chairman by the 29th of October had absolutely no bearing on Party regulations. Had the votes not been delivered until later the vote of no confidence would still have gone ahead. Nevertheless, by the 28th of October, 25 Conservative MPs had indeed signed on to demand a vote.
After the vote was announced, Duncan Smith made an appearance in front of Conservative Party headquarters in Smith Square, where he stated that he was going to "absolutely" contest the vote. It was held on the 29th of October, and Duncan Smith lost, 90-75. The following day, The Guardian's leader quipped that 'the quiet man has been silenced.'
[edit] Since 2003
Since leaving office, he has established the Centre for Social Justice, a centre-right thinktank which aims to work to solve the problems facing Britain's inner cities. It has been successful in ensuring Social Justice is a significant part of the evolving Conservative party agenda.
On 7 December 2005, Duncan Smith was appointed Chairman of the Social Justice Policy Group. The group's aim is to "study the causes and consequences of poverty in Britain and seek practical ideas to empower the least well-off," and is one of several set up by the new Conservative Party leader David Cameron, Duncan Smith will be joined in this task by Deputy Chair Debbie Scott the Chief Executive the charity Tomorrow's People. The group is expected to demand a tougher line on family values. [1]
He was re-elected comfortably in Chingford and Woodford Green at the 2005 General Election, almost doubling his majority, and remains a backbencher for the Conservative Party.
On 6 November, shortly after being forced from office, his novel The Devil's Tune was released. This book received heavily critical reviews, perhaps the most famous from Sam Leith in The Daily Telegraph, which said, "Really, it's terrible... Terrible, terrible, terrible." The book was never published in paperback.
In September 2006 he was one of three authors of a report concerning Anti-Semitism in Britain.
[edit] Trivia
Duncan Smith is a keen Tottenham Hotspur supporter [citation needed].
For details of his shadow cabinets, see UK Shadow Cabinet 2001-2003.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Conservative Party - Iain Duncan Smith profile
- ePolitix.com - Iain Duncan Smith profile
- Guardian Politics Ask Aristotle - Iain Duncan Smith MP
- TheyWorkForYou.com - Iain Duncan Smith MP
- The Public Whip - Iain Duncan Smith MP voting record
- MP's rates of reply to faxes and emails from constituents, according to faxyourmp.com
- Open Directory Project - Iain Duncan Smith directory category
- Tory leader's education under scrutiny (BBC News, December 19, 2002)
- BBC News - Iain Duncan Smith profile 18 October, 2002
- Duncan Smith's secret samurai past (Guardian Unlimited, September 3, 2001)
- Centre for Social Justice
- Dissatisfied Tories Pose Problem For Duncan Smith - And Themselves
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by: Norman Tebbit | Member of Parliament for Chingford 1992–1997 | Succeeded by: constituency abolished |
| Preceded by: new constituency | Member of Parliament for Chingford and Woodford Green 1997 – present | Incumbent |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by: William Hague | Leader of the British Conservative Party 2001–2003 | Succeeded by: Michael Howard |
| Leader of the Opposition 2001–2003 | ||
fi:Iain Duncan Smith sv:Iain Duncan Smith
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements | 1954 births | Living people | People from Edinburgh | Current members of the United Kingdom Parliament from English constituencies | Leaders of the British Conservative Party | Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom | Conservative MPs (UK)
