Edmund Emanuel Dell was a British politician and businessman.
15 Facts About Edmund Dell
2.
Edmund Dell was educated at Dame Alice Owen's School and Queen's College, Oxford where he was a member of the Communist Party, as his future ministerial colleague Denis Healey had been before the war.
3.
Edmund Dell graduated with first class honours in Modern History in 1947.
4.
Edmund Dell began work for Imperial Chemical Industries in Manchester as an overseas sales manager, specialising in Latin American trade and eventually rose to Vice President of the Plastics Division.
5.
Edmund Dell was elected to Manchester City Council in 1953, and served for seven years.
6.
Edmund Dell stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1955 in Middleton and Prestwich.
7.
Edmund Dell was dissuaded from standing for Parliament in 1959 by ICI, on the grounds that it would make promotion to the highest ranks of the company difficult.
8.
Edmund Dell served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jack Diamond, then as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Technology under Tony Benn in 1966 and the Department of Economic Affairs under Peter Shore in 1967.
9.
Edmund Dell was one of the 69 rebel Labour MPs who sided with the Conservative government and voted for Britain's entry into the European Communities in 1971.
10.
Edmund Dell subsequently refused to take a frontbench role while in opposition and served as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.
11.
When Harold Wilson returned to 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister in 1974, Edmund Dell became Paymaster General, then Secretary of State for Trade and President of the Board of Trade between 1976 and 1978 in James Callaghan's government.
12.
Edmund Dell was tipped to become Chancellor of the Exchequer but resigned his seat, increasingly disillusioned by Labour's drift to the Left as he moved sharply to the Right.
13.
Edmund Dell had always been much more oriented toward free-market capitalism than his comrades in the Labour Party, and grew increasingly uncomfortable in a party that was growing increasingly dominated by advocates of a planned economy and corporatism.
14.
Edmund Dell joined the new Social Democratic Party and, after its merger with the Liberal Party in 1988, he was a member of the Liberal Democrats.
15.
Edmund Dell served as a trustee of both the SDP and the Liberal Democrats and served as one of SDP's three representatives during emergency negotiations with the Liberals in January 1988 when it appeared the two parties' merger might fall through after the failed launch by David Steel and Bob Maclennan of the joint manifesto, Voices and Choices.