Robert Hughes, Baron Hughes of Woodside

The Right Honourable The Lord Hughes of Woodside
Hughes in 2018
Shadow Secretary of State for Transport
In office 4 November 1985 – 23 November 1988
Leader	Neil Kinnock
Preceded by	Gwyneth Dunwoody
Succeeded by	John Prescott
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland
In office 11 March 1974 – 22 July 1975
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson
Preceded by	Hector Monro
Succeeded by	Frank McElhone
Member of Parliament for Aberdeen North
In office 18 June 1970 – 1 May 1997
Preceded by	Hector Hughes
Succeeded by	Malcolm Savidge
Personal details
Born	Robert Hughes (1932-01-03) 3 January 1932 (age 89) Aberdeen, Scotland
Nationality	British
Political party	Scottish Labour

Robert Hughes, Baron Hughes of Woodside (born 3 January 1932)^[1] is a British Labour Party politician and was also Chair of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) from 1976 until it was dissolved in 1995 after the ending of apartheid in South Africa.

Early life[]

Hughes was educated at Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen and in South Africa, where he lived from 1947 until 1954 and worked as a draughtsman.

Political career[]

Hughes first stood for Parliament in 1959 at North Angus and Mearns, where he came second to the Conservative incumbent Colin Thornton-Kemsley. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Aberdeen North from 1970 to 1997.^[2]

Hughes was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland from March 1974 until July 1975, when he resigned in disagreement with the government's incomes policy.

The infamous 1979 vote of no confidence resulted from the Labour government overturning the "Yes" result of the Scottish devolution referendum. Rather than the SNP, prime minister James Callaghan blamed unionist rebels on his own benches for ultimately bringing about the collapse of his government and opening the door to victory for Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives. Hughes was one of those rebels. Tam Dalyell, Peter Doig, and Adam Hunter were the other Scottish Labour MPs who helped overturn the "Yes" vote.^[3]

In November 1985, Hughes was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Transport.^[4] On 27 September 1997, he was created a life peer as Baron Hughes of Woodside, of Woodside in the City of Aberdeen.^[5][6] He is a patron of Humanists UK.^[7]

Anti-Apartheid Movement[]

Under his chairmanship the Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigned against the Thatcher government's refusal to impose sanctions against South Africa in the 1980s and organised the 1988 ‘Free Mandela’ concert at Wembley Stadium which was televised by the BBC and broadcast around the world. Hughes attended the independence celebrations in Namibia in 1990 and acted as an observer at South Africa's first democratic elections in April 1994. After the dissolution of the AAM he became the first Chairperson of its successor organisation, Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA).

Hughes's tactics were sometimes critiqued as opportunist by radicals in the movement, such as the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group, examples being his attitude towards the Common Wealth games and censorship of material within the AAM that related to the Non-Stop Picket. In July 1986, the Commonwealth Games was held in Edinburgh.  In protest at the Thatcher government's support for apartheid and refusal to implement the sports boycott of South Africa, 32 of the 59 Commonwealth nations boycotted the Games.  This could have been an opportunity for the Anti-Apartheid Movement to raise the profile of its boycott campaign.  Instead, Hughes and Brian Filling, the Scottish Secretary of the AAM, signed a letter, organised by the Scottish Trade Union Congress and published in The Scotsman newspaper, calling on those Commonwealth nations to call off their boycott. Secondly, at the AAM's annual general meeting in 1986, Hughes and Roberts refused to hear 'motion 16' which resulted in the continued censorship of material relating to an ongoing picket of the South African Embassy in London that would last nearly four years.^[8]

References[]

External links[]

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Robert Hughes