52 Facts About Mayor Ken Livingstone

1.

Mayor Ken Livingstone served as the Member of Parliament for Brent East from 1987 to 2001.

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2.

Mayor Ken Livingstone was a vocal opponent of the Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, which in 1986 abolished the GLC.

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3.

Mayor Ken Livingstone attempted to stand for the position of Labour Party leader following Neil Kinnock's resignation in 1992, but failed to get enough nominations.

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4.

Mayor Ken Livingstone became a vocal critic of Tony Blair's New Labour project that pushed the party closer to the political centre and won the 1997 general election.

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5.

Mayor Ken Livingstone was born in his grandmother's house at 21 Shrubbery Road Streatham, South London, on 17 June 1945.

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6.

Mayor Ken Livingstone joined the Labour Party in March 1968, when he was 23 years old, later describing it as "one of the few recorded instances of a rat climbing aboard a sinking ship".

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7.

Contrastingly, Mayor Ken Livingstone believed that grassroots campaigning – such as the 1968 student protests – were ineffective, joining Labour because he considered it the best chance for implementing progressive political change in the UK.

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8.

In October 1971, Mayor Ken Livingstone's father died of a heart attack; his mother soon moved to Lincoln.

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9.

Mayor Ken Livingstone stood as the leftist candidate for the Chair of the Lambeth Housing Committee in April 1973, but was defeated by David Stimpson, who undid many of Mayor Ken Livingstone and Carr's reforms.

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10.

In June 1972, after a campaign orchestrated by Eddie Lopez, Mayor Ken Livingstone was selected as the Labour candidate for Norwood in the Greater London Council.

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11.

Mayor Ken Livingstone joined the activists, on 15 July 1978 helping unify small left wing groups as the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory.

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12.

In September 1980, Mayor Ken Livingstone separated from his wife Christine, though they remained amicable.

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13.

Mayor Ken Livingstone turned his attention to achieving a GLC Labour victory, exchanging his safe seat in Hackney North for the marginal Inner London seat at Paddington; in May 1981 he won the seat by 2,397 votes.

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14.

In 1983, Livingstone began co-presenting a late night television chat show with Janet Street-Porter for London Weekend Television.

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15.

In July 1981, Mayor Ken Livingstone founded the Ethnic Minorities Committee, the Police Committee, and the Gay and Lesbian Working Party, and in June 1982, a Women's Committee was established.

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16.

Supporter of Irish reunification, Mayor Ken Livingstone had connections with the left-wing Irish republican party Sinn Fein and in July, met with the mother of an imprisoned Provisional Irish Republican Army militant Thomas McElwee, then taking part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike.

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17.

Mayor Ken Livingstone agreed to meet Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein President and IRA-supporter, after Adams was invited to London by Labour members of the Troops Out campaign in December 1982.

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18.

In February 1983, Mayor Ken Livingstone visited Adams in his constituency of West Belfast, receiving a hero's welcome from local republicans.

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19.

GLC was formally abolished at midnight on 31 March 1986, with Mayor Ken Livingstone marking the occasion by holding a free concert at Festival Hall.

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20.

Mayor Ken Livingstone defeated Reg Freeson in the selection process to represent Labour for the north-west London constituency of Brent East in the 1987 general election.

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21.

In September 1987 Mayor Ken Livingstone was elected to Labour's National Executive Committee, although he was voted off in October 1989, to be replaced by John Prescott.

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22.

Mayor Ken Livingstone refused to pay the controversial poll tax until it was revoked, and was one of the 55 Labour MPs to oppose British involvement in the Gulf War in January 1991.

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23.

In October 1991 Mayor Ken Livingstone began writing a column for Rupert Murdoch's right-wing tabloid The Sun, a controversial move among British socialists.

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24.

In 1995, Mayor Ken Livingstone was invited to appear on the track "Ernold Same" by the band Blur.

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25.

In March 2000, Mayor Ken Livingstone agreed to make a public apology to the House of Commons, after he was criticised over his failure to properly register outside interests worth more than £150,000.

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26.

At a May 2002 party in Tufnell Park, Mayor Ken Livingstone got into an argument with Beal's friend Robin Hedges, a reporter for the Evening Standard.

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27.

In 2002, Mayor Ken Livingstone came out in support of a proposal for the 2012 Olympic Games to be held in London.

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28.

Mayor Ken Livingstone gained the support of Labour's culture secretary Tessa Jowell, who convinced the government to back the plans in May 2003.

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29.

Mayor Ken Livingstone had no control over government policy regarding immigration, which had resulted in a significant growth in foreign arrivals coming to London during his administration; from 2000 to 2005 London's population grew by 200,000 to reach 7.

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30.

Mayor Ken Livingstone continued to court controversy throughout the campaign; in June 2004 he was quoted on The Guardian's website as saying: "I just long for the day I wake up and find that the Saudi Royal Family are swinging from lamp-posts and they've got a proper government that represents the people of Saudi Arabia", for which he was widely criticised.

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31.

Mayor Ken Livingstone continued to champion the Palestinian cause in the Israel-Palestine conflict, in March 2005 accusing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of being a "war criminal" responsible for the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre.

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32.

On 6 July 2005, in a ceremony held in Singapore attended by Mayor Ken Livingstone, London was announced as the victor, resulting in widespread celebration.

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33.

Mayor Ken Livingstone denied he was antisemitic, holding regular meetings with Jewish groups and introducing public Hanukkah celebrations in Trafalgar Square in December 2005.

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34.

Mayor Ken Livingstone was again described as antisemitic in March 2006 for asserting, after conflict over a major building project, that Indian-born Jewish businessmen David and Simon Reuben should "go back to Iran and see if they can do better under the ayatollahs".

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35.

In March 2006, Mayor Ken Livingstone criticised foreign embassies who refused to pay the congestion charge under the conditions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

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36.

Meanwhile, Mayor Ken Livingstone felt vindicated in his former opposition to public private partnership when one of the companies who now controlled part of the Underground, Metronet, collapsed in July 2007, with the state having to intervene to protect the service.

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37.

In May 2006, Mayor Ken Livingstone welcomed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to London, hosting an event for him at City Hall.

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38.

In November 2006, Mayor Ken Livingstone travelled to Latin America to visit Chavez, during which he and his entourage stayed in Cuba at a cost of £29,000; many British sources described the visit as a waste of tax-payer's money.

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39.

Mayor Ken Livingstone helped organise the first "Eid in the Square" event at Trafalgar Square in commemoration of the Islamic Eid ul-Fitr festival in October 2006.

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40.

In May 2007, Mayor Ken Livingstone travelled to New York City to attend the C40 conference of major world cities to deal with environmentalist issues.

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41.

Intent on giving Venezuela the "advice that we promised", Mayor Ken Livingstone announced in August 2008 that he would be advising urban planning in Caracas.

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42.

In January 2009, Mayor Ken Livingstone responded to the Gaza War by calling for the European Union and the UK to recall their ambassadors to Israel.

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43.

In May 2015, Livingstone endorsed Sadiq Khan to be the Labour candidate for the 2016 London mayoral election, and, in July, endorsed Jeremy Corbyn in the 2015 Labour Party leadership election.

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44.

Mayor Ken Livingstone faced further criticism following a television appearance in which he stated that the perpetrators of the 2005 London bombings carried out their actions as retribution for UK involvement in the Iraq War.

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45.

In March 2016, Mayor Ken Livingstone again courted controversy by comparing a hedge fund manager's £16,800 donation to Labour MP Dan Jarvis to "Jimmy Savile funding a children's group"; it subsequently emerged that Mayor Ken Livingstone himself had received £8,000 from a Bermuda-based hedge fund called Meditor for a speaking engagement, leading to accusations of hypocrisy.

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46.

Mayor Ken Livingstone described Shah's postings, which were made before she became an MP in 2015, as "rude and over-the-top" but not antisemitic, adding that he had never encountered antisemitism in Labour.

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47.

Mayor Ken Livingstone announced his resignation from Labour on 21 May 2018, saying the issues surrounding his suspension had become a distraction.

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48.

In January 2022, Mayor Ken Livingstone announced his intention of joining the Green Party of England and Wales, although urged other socialists to remain within Labour and work towards "a Green-Labour coalition" government.

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49.

Historian Alwyn W Turner noted that Livingstone was a "gifted communicator and self-publicist" who was able to stump his opponents using his "mischievous sense of humour".

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50.

Mayor Ken Livingstone married Christine Pamela Chapman in 1973; the marriage ended in divorce in 1982.

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51.

Mayor Ken Livingstone had fathered three children prior to 2000; a boy by one mother and two girls by another.

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52.

The children were born to two different women while Livingstone was involved with Kate Allen, according to an article by Decca Aitkenhead:.

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