Colin Burgon was born on 22 April 1948 and is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for Elmet from 1997 to 2010.
13 Facts About Colin Burgon
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Colin Burgon was born in Leeds to Catholic, Labour-supporting parents.
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Colin Burgon's mother, Winnie, was a school secretary; his father, Tommy, was a tailor; and his brother Terence became a teacher.
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On leaving school, Colin Burgon trained as a teacher at Carnegie College, Leeds, then studied at Huddersfield Polytechnic.
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Colin Burgon worked as a history teacher at Foxwood High School, a deprived secondary school in the Seacroft area of East Leeds, where he was an active member of the NUT union.
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Colin Burgon left teaching and the NUT in 1987 to work for Wakefield District Council as a local government policy and research officer.
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Colin Burgon was a research officer with the GMB Union.
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Colin Burgon was the election agent for the Labour Party in Elmet in 1983 before being selected himself as the Labour candidate for Elmet.
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Colin Burgon unsuccessfully contested Elmet in 1987 and 1992, both times coming second to the incumbent Conservative, Spencer Batiste.
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In 1997, Colin Burgon contested Elmet for the third time, finally defeating Batiste with an 8,779-vote majority.
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Colin Burgon has taken interest in socialism in South America, particularly in Venezuela.
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Colin Burgon is on the left of the Labour Party and has vociferously criticised what he calls the "neo-liberal" policies the party pursued during the New Labour leaderships of Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
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Colin Burgon has taken a keen interest in opencast mining, an important issue in Elmet.