Denzil Davies


David John Denzil Davies was a British Labour politician. He served for 35 years as the Member of Parliament for Llanelli from 1970 to 2005, and was a member of the Privy Council.

Early life

Davies was born in Cynwyl Elfed, Carmarthenshire. He attended Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School for Boys in Carmarthen, and then Pembroke College, Oxford, where he graduated with a First Class Honours BA in Law and Gray's Inn where he qualified as a barrister. He lectured in Law at University of Chicago in 1963 and the University of Leeds from 1964. He practised at the tax bar between 1967 and 1975. Later he also practised in the field of personal injuries and served as a head of chambers.

Parliamentary career

Davies unsuccessfully sought the Labour nomination for the 1966 Carmarthen by-election, losing out to Gwilym Prys-Davies.
Davies was elected in the 1970 general election as the Member of Parliament for Llanelli. He would go on to be appointed as a Treasury Minister in James Callaghan's Government. He was a Eurosceptic, and he campaigned against Britain's entry into the EEC. He also opposed the National Assembly for Wales.
Davies served in a number of posts when Labour formed the Official Opposition after the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, including Shadow Secretary of State for Wales in Michael Foot's Shadow Cabinet and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in Neil Kinnock's. Like his predecessor as Shadow Defence Secretary, John Silkin, he resigned from the front bench in June 1988 in protest at Neil Kinnock's management style. The trigger for his resignation was Kinnock's announcement, without reference to Davies or the Shadow Cabinet, of a change in Labour's defence policy, from unilateral nuclear disarmament to multilateral nuclear disarmament and then back to unilateral nuclear disarmament, over a period of three days. He made an unsuccessful bid for the Labour Party deputy leadership in 1983.
He was one of the few Labour MPs with ministerial experience remaining after the 1997 landslide that returned Labour to power after 18 years in opposition. As a backbencher Davies continued to oppose Britain's membership of the EU.
He stood down at the 2005 general election, and was replaced by Nia Griffith. He died on 10 October 2018.

Personal life

He married Mary Ann Finlay in 1963. They had a son and daughter. They divorced in 1988. He married Ann Carlton in 1989.

Publications