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Simon Christopher Danczuk (born 24 October 1966) is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Rochdale since 2010.

Early life and career

Danczuk grew up in Hapton, Lancashire. He started working life at the age of sixteen in a factory making gas fires, before moving to the chemical company ICI. Whilst working, he studied at night school and gained qualifications he had missed out at secondary school, before gaining a place at Lancaster University, studying economic sociology and politics as a mature student.

Danczuk was co-founder with Ruth Turner of Urban Visions Limited, which traded as Vision Twentyone, a research, public affairs and communications consultancy. He has also held research positions at The Big Issue in the North, Opinion Research Corporation, Bolton Bury TEC and worked for academics at Lancaster University. He has written widely on topics such as democracy, homelessness, regeneration, drugs, housing and employment.

Danczuk founded The Necessary Group, a campaign group of businessmen and politicians, which campaigned prior to the expected referenda for an elected Regional Assembly for the North West of England.

Danczuk continued to be a director and majority shareholder in Urban Visions Limited after he became an MP, but it went into liquidation in June 2011, and was wound up owing £222,000 to creditors, including £113,000 to HM Revenue and Customs.

Labour Party

Danczuk has been involved in the Labour movement for many years having joined the Labour Party through the GMB trade union in the late 1980s. At the age of 27, he was elected as a councillor to Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, serving for eight years with portfolios including economic development and then education.

Prior to his selection for Labour in Rochdale he was also campaign manager for Janet Anderson, who was defending her seat in the Rossendale and Darwen constituency, at the 2005 General Election – helping retain the seat for Labour with a reduced majority of 3,500. The next year, Danczuk was a campaign strategist for Labour Party during the 2006 Local Elections and sat on North West Labour’s Regional Board (the Party’s governing body for the region) for 13 years. He was Constituency Secretary for Rossendale and Darwen Labour Party from 1991 to 1994, when Anderson took the seat for Labour for the first time in 1992, from David Trippier.

Danczuk was selected in early 2007 to be Rochdale Labour Party's Prospective Parliamentary Candidate. The acrimonious selection process was delayed due to problems with postal voting and the local party passing a motion of no confidence in the selection process. Local members were concerned that the short-listing process was deliberately manipulated in order to exclude Afzal Khan, a Manchester councillor, who had received the highest number of nominations.

In August 2006, Tribune magazine revealed that Danczuk's company Vision 21 had sent questionnaires to Labour members in Rochdale on behalf of the regional party—giving him an alleged unfair advantage as he had access to members' views. Danczuk reported that he received death threats during the selection process. The postal ballot got a 78% turnout and Danczuk received almost twice as many votes as the second-placed candidate.

Member of Parliament

In the 2010 election, Danczuk won 16,699 votes, unseating incumbent Liberal Democrat Paul Rowen, who received 15,810 as Conservative Mudasir Dean polled 8,305, despite the incident leading to Prime Minister Gordon Brown's "bigoted woman" remark having occurred in Rochdale.

In May 2011, Danczuk made a criminal complaint to Essex Police about Liberal Democrat MP and Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne after it was alleged that Huhne had asked someone to take his penalty points for a speeding offence in 2003. On 3 February 2012, Huhne became the first Cabinet Minister in British political history to be forced from office as a result of criminal proceedings.

In the wake of the 2013 Labour Party Falkirk candidate selection controversy, Danczuk compared some elements of the hard left to the far-right British National Party (BNP) in an opinion piece in The Daily Telegraph.

Westminster paedophilia investigation

In 2014 Danczuk, with researcher and campaigner Matthew Baker, published Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith, an expose of the child abuse committed by his parliamentary predecessor in Rochdale, Cyril Smith. Danczuk said that Smith's abuse included spankings and forcing boys to perform sex acts on him. Danczuk described Smith as "a predatory paedophile and a prolific offender who would target the most vulnerable boys."

In July 2014 Danczuk called for former home secretary Leon Brittan to make public what he knew about a dossier of allegations about paedophiles presented to him by Geoffrey Dickens MP between 1983 and 1985, which could identify several historic child sex abusers. The Home Office stated the dossier had not been retained in their files. Former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord Macdonald said the circumstances in which the dossier had gone missing were alarming, and recommended an inquiry into its fate. Prime Minister David Cameron subsequently asked the Home Office Permanent Secretary to investigate what happened to the missing dossier. Danczuk responded that another internal inquiry was merely trying to limit damage, and that a public inquiry was necessary to retain public confidence.

Danczuk also wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions asking for a review of the decision not to investigate certain historical allegations of sexual abuse made against senior Westminster politicians.

Personal life

Danczuk is married to Karen Danczuk, who is a councillor for Kingsway, Rochdale. Danczuk was previously married to Sonia Milewski with whom he had two children. They divorced in 2010.

Bibliography

• Walk on By...Begging, Street Drinking and the Giving Age (2001), Crisis
• The Jury's Out on User Consultation (2002), Druglink
• Smile for the Camera: The Double Life of Cyril Smith (2014, with Matthew Baker), Biteback, ISBN 978-1-849-54644-7

Articles

• Has anyone noticed Tory tanks rolling onto Labour's lawn?, 7 April 2014
• It's time Labour talked about universal benefits, 31 March 2014
• A Small Business Kitemark would foster local government best practice, 12 March 2014
• Policy makers must learn to understand the working class, 4 March 2014
• It's Much Harder to Set Up a Successful Small Business Than Become a Politician, 27 February 2014
• Don't vote? Maybe you don't deserve an MP, 25 February 2014
• This is not the way to reform welfare, 21 January 2014
• The new 'on mess' is being off message, 7 January 2014
• Labour is now the friend of small business, 31 October 2013
• Let's all take a deep breath..., 10 July 2013
• Labour's militant left no better than BNP, 9 July 2013
• Personal responsibility has to be at the heart of our welfare system, 8 June 2013
• We must challenge the biggest welfare myth of all, 20 May 2013
• We can't ignore the tragedy of people's potential going to waste, 7 April 2013
• Labour should forge stronger links with Fatah, 4 January 2013
• The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all, 30 March 2012
• Grant Shapps must hit the ground running, 24 January 2012
• A place to rebuild their shattered lives, 26 September 2011

References

1. "Crown Office". London-gazette.co.uk. 13 May 2010. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
2. "www.ukpollingreport.co.uk". UK Polling Report Website.
3. ^ Deborah Linton (12 July 2011). "Rochdale MP's firm owes taxman 110k after going bust". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
4. "The Vision 21 team". Vision 21. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
5. "Referendum decision sparks launch of 'Yes' campaign". Ellesmere Port Pioneer. 17 June 2003. Retrieved 15 March 2009.
6. "The Register of Members' Interests, 20 June 2011 - Simon Danczuk". TheyWorkForYou. mySociety. Retrieved 5 February 2013.
7. ^ "Simon Danczuk selected as Rochdale Labour Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate". Article on www.rochdaleonline.co.uk. 26 January 2007.
8. ^ Kevin Maguire (11 January 2007). "Not just dirty, deadly..." Daily Mirror. Retrieved 15 March 2009.
9. Barckley Sumner (19 January 2007). "Charge and counter-charge as shambles engulf selections". Tribune. Retrieved 14 November 2012.
10. Verrinder, James. "Former researchers Zahawi and Danczuk win seats in UK parliament" Research-Online.com 7 May 2010
11. BBC News, "Police to decide whether to probe Huhne speeding claim", BBC News Online, (15 May 2011)
12. J. Chapman, "Huhne pays for his infidelity: Minister's career in ruins as feud with ex-wife lands them both in court over speeding points", The Daily Mail, 4 February 2012
13. Labour's militant left is no better than the BNP
14. "Smile for the Camera". Biteback publishing. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
15. Jones, Chris (15 April 2014). "MP defends book on Cyril Smith". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 14 May 2014.
16. "Leon Brittan urged to comment on 1980s 'paedophile dossier'". BBC. 1 July 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
17. "Home Office under fire over 'lost' paedophile dossier". BBC. 2 July 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
18. Georgia Graham and James Kirkup (2 July 2014). "Launch formal investigation into the lost paedophile dossier, says former DPP". Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
19. Rajeev Syal (4 July 2014). "David Cameron asks top civil servant to look into Westminster child abuse claims". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
20. Mark Conrad and David Hencke (1 July 2014). "Simon Danczuk ask DPP to review claim over Elm Guest House". Exaro News. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
21. Paul Gallagher (9 December 2013). "MP's new sandwich shop opens for business". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
22. "Danczuk divorced for adultery". Rochdale Online. 9 September 2009. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
23. Tom Mctague (16 June 2014). "'I took ecstasy and cannabis': Labour MP Simon Danczuk admits drug fuelled nights out, as wife defends 'cleavage selfies'". Daily Mail. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
24. http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/WalkOnBy_full%5B1%5D.pdf
25. "Social Care Online | The jury's out on user consultation". Beta.scie-socialcareonline.org.uk. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
26. "Has anyone noticed Tory tanks rolling onto Labour's lawn? » Spectator Blogs". Blogs.spectator.co.uk. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
27. "It's time Labour talked about universal benefits » Spectator Blogs". Blogs.spectator.co.uk. 31 March 2014. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
28. "A Small Business Kitemark would foster local government best practice". Tenentrepreneurs.org. 11 April 2014. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
29. Stern, Stefan (4 March 2014). "Policy makers must learn to understand the working class". LabourList. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
30. "It's Much Harder to Set Up a Successful Small Business Than Become a Politician | Simon Danczuk". Huffingtonpost.co.uk. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
31. "Simon Danczuk on voter apathy: We don't need Russell Brand to tell us we're in a full-blown democratic crisis". Manchester Evening News. 25 February 2014. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
32. Pope, Conor (21 January 2014). "This is not the way to reform welfare". LabourList. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
33. Simon Danczuk (7 January 2014). "The new 'on message' is being off message". Prweek.com. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
34. Stern, Stefan (31 October 2013). "Labour is now the friend of small business". LabourList. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
35. Stern, Stefan (10 July 2013). "Let's all take a deep breath..." LabourList. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
36. "Simon Danczuk MP: 'Labour's militant left no better than BNP'". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
37. Danczuk, Simon. "Simon Danczuk MP: 'Personal responsibility has to be at the heart of our welfare system'". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
38. Pope, Conor (20 May 2013). "We must challenge the biggest welfare myth of all". LabourList. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
39. ^ "Simon Danczuk MP: 'We can't ignore the tragedy of people's potential going to waste'". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
40. Stern, Stefan (30 March 2012). "The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all". LabourList. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
41. ^ Stern, Stefan (4 January 2012). "Grant Shapps must hit the ground running". LabourList. Retrieved 22 April 2014.

External links

• Official website
• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard
• Voting record at Public Whip
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou

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• 1966 births
• Living people
• Alumni of Lancaster University
• Councillors in Lancashire
• English male writers
• English non-fiction writers
• English people of Polish descent
• Labour Party (UK) MPs
• Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies
• People from Rochdale
• UK MPs 2010–15
• UK MPs 2015–20