Background

Edmund Dell was born on August 15, 1921, in London. He is the son of a Reuben and Frances (Fanny) Dell.

Education

Edmund Dell studied at Dame Alice Owen's School. Later he entered Queen's College where he studied until 1947. He graduated with first-class honors in Modern History.

Career

Edmund Dell started his career as a lecturer in modern history at the Queen's College in 1947. Before that he served as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery operating 6lb and 17lb anti-tank guns in the Third British Division during The Second World War. In 1949 Dell took up a post of overseas sales manager at Imperial Chemical Industries. Later he rose to Vice President of the Plastics Division. He began his political career in 1953 when he became a Member of the City Council of Manchester. He held this post for seven years.

Edmund Dell also worked as a research scientist from 1963 to 1964. In 1965 he became the first Parliamentary Private Secretary of John Diamond and in 1966 he started to work as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Technology. Dell also worked at the Department of Economic Affairs in 1967. The next year, he was promoted to Minister of State for Trade and then become the minister of state at the Department of Employment and Productivity. From 1979 to 1982 Edmund Dell held the post of chief executive at the Guinness Peat Group and also became a founder chairman of Channel 4 Television. In 1983 he became president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In addition to his political career, Dell has published numerous books on political, historical and economic topics. For example, in 1973 he published Political responsibility and industry and in 1996 The Chancellors: A History of the Chancellors of the Exchequer, 1945-90. His book, A Strange Eventful History, Democratic Socialism in Britain was published posthumously in 2000.

Achievements

• Edmund Dell was known as a British politician who served as a Parliamentary Private Secretary and Minister of the Department of Employment and Productivity. He also was President of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry and a Privy Councillor.
  
  Dell wrote several books among which The Schuman Plan and the British Abdication of Leadership in Europe and Strange Eventful History: Democratic Socialism in Britain.

Works

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• book

  • Strange Eventful History: Democratic Socialism in Britain

    (Tracing the transition from the visions of the Clause Fou...)

    2000
  • The Schuman Plan and the British Abdication of Leadership in Europe

    (Edmund Dell examines the Attlee government's rejection of...)

    1995
  • Political responsibility and industry 1973
  • The Politics of Economic Interdependence 1977
  • A Hard Pounding: Politics and Economic Crisis, 1974-76 1991
  • The Chancellors: A History of the Chancellors of the Exchequer, 1945-90 1996

Politics

When Edmund Dell studied at the Queen's College he became a member of the Communist Party. However, in the 1960s he became a member of Labor party and was elected to Parliament as the Labour Member of Parliament for Birkenhead in 1964.

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. He had always been much more oriented toward free-market capitalism.

In 1988 he joined the new Social Democratic Party and, after its merger with the Liberal Party in 1988, he was a member of the Liberal Democrats. He served as a trustee of both the SDP and the Liberal Democrats.

Connections

Dell was married to Susan Gottschalk for 36 years.

Father:

Reuben Dell

Mother:

Frances Dell

Wife:

Susan Gottschalk

References

• The International Who's Who 1998-99
  1998