Denzil Davies
Labour politician BORN OCTOBER 9, 1938 DIED OCTOBER, 10 2018, AGED 80
DENZIL DAVIES served as an MP for 35 years and was a Treasury minister under James Callaghan’s leadership in the 1970s.
The son of a colliery blacksmith and born in Cynwyl Elfed, Carmarthenshire, Davies joined the Labour Party as a teenager.
He studied law at Oxford and was called to the bar at Gray’s Inn and practised as a lawyer for 11 years.
In 1963 Davies married his first wife Mary but they divorced 25 years later.
Gradually growing as a force in politics, Davies was elected as Labour MP for Llanelli in 1970.
He was a staunch Eurosceptic and opposed devolution in Wales.
In James Callaghan’s government, Davies bypassed junior ranks to enter government directly as a Treasury minister.
He was also the youngest member of the Privy Council in 1978 and, showing signs of a great parliamentary career, was identified as a potential future Labour leader.
One editor wrote that, “he would have reached the Cabinet had the long winter of Thatcherism not frozen Labour out of Downing Street.”
Yet it wasn’t meant to be and in 1979, when the Conservatives won a landslide majority, Davies helped form Labour’s Official Opposition.
He first worked as shadow secretary of state for Wales and then as shadow defence minister under Neil Kinnock.
However after five years Davies resigned while on a 2am conference call to the Press Association in 1988.
The trigger was not being consulted by Kinnock about changes in Labour’s defence policy. He spent his remaining 17 years on the backbenches until he retired in 2005.
He is survived by his second wife Ann, whom he married in 1989, and two children from his first marriage to Mary Finlay.