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Robert Kilroy-Silk
Robert Michael Kilroy-Silk (né Silk; born 19 May 1942) is an English former politician and broadcaster. After a decade as a university lecturer, he served as a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 to 1986. He left the House of Commons in 1986 in order to present a new BBC Television daytime talk show, Kilroy, which ran until 2004. He returned to politics, serving as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2004 to 2009. He had a significant role in the mainstreaming of Eurosceptic politics in the UK and has been dubbed 'The Godfather of Brexit'.
Kilroy-Silk was born in Birmingham, son of William Silk, a Royal Navy leading stoker, and his wife Minnie Rose (née Rooke). William Silk was lost at sea when aged 22, serving on HMS Charybdis, which was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of Brittany by German torpedo boats on 23 October 1943. His son was 17 months old.
Robert's mother Rose remarried in 1946, to family friend John Francis Kilroy, a car worker at the Rootes plant in Warwickshire. He adopted the young boy, who from then used the surname Kilroy-Silk.
Kilroy-Silk failed his eleven-plus examination, for entry to selective schools, in 1953. He spent his first year at a secondary modern school and later passed the review exam and went to Saltley Grammar School, Saltley, Birmingham. He attended the London School of Economics to study politics and economics.
In 1963, Kilroy-Silk married Jan Beech, daughter of a shop steward. The couple met when he was 18 and she was 17. They have a son and a daughter.
After graduation he became a lecturer in politics at the University of Liverpool, serving from 1966 to 1974. He published a theoretical work, Socialism since Marx, in 1972. Kilroy-Silk moved to Warleigh House in Plymouth in 2015 with his wife.
At the February 1974 general election, Kilroy-Silk was elected as a Labour MP for the Ormskirk constituency in Lancashire. He remained its MP until its abolition at the 1983 general election, when he was elected to represent the new Knowsley North seat; he held this until his resignation from the House of Commons in 1986. In an article for The Times in 1975, Kilroy-Silk argued that politics was not "compromises and bargains" or hankering after "a spurious consensus". He wrote that the function of government, particularly a Labour government, was
"to impose its values on society. Its role is creative: to cast, so far as it is able, society in its image". Furthermore, socialists should not be worried about being accused of dictatorial powers; they must go forward with "a tint of arrogance".
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Robert Kilroy-Silk
Robert Michael Kilroy-Silk (né Silk; born 19 May 1942) is an English former politician and broadcaster. After a decade as a university lecturer, he served as a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 to 1986. He left the House of Commons in 1986 in order to present a new BBC Television daytime talk show, Kilroy, which ran until 2004. He returned to politics, serving as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2004 to 2009. He had a significant role in the mainstreaming of Eurosceptic politics in the UK and has been dubbed 'The Godfather of Brexit'.
Kilroy-Silk was born in Birmingham, son of William Silk, a Royal Navy leading stoker, and his wife Minnie Rose (née Rooke). William Silk was lost at sea when aged 22, serving on HMS Charybdis, which was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of Brittany by German torpedo boats on 23 October 1943. His son was 17 months old.
Robert's mother Rose remarried in 1946, to family friend John Francis Kilroy, a car worker at the Rootes plant in Warwickshire. He adopted the young boy, who from then used the surname Kilroy-Silk.
Kilroy-Silk failed his eleven-plus examination, for entry to selective schools, in 1953. He spent his first year at a secondary modern school and later passed the review exam and went to Saltley Grammar School, Saltley, Birmingham. He attended the London School of Economics to study politics and economics.
In 1963, Kilroy-Silk married Jan Beech, daughter of a shop steward. The couple met when he was 18 and she was 17. They have a son and a daughter.
After graduation he became a lecturer in politics at the University of Liverpool, serving from 1966 to 1974. He published a theoretical work, Socialism since Marx, in 1972. Kilroy-Silk moved to Warleigh House in Plymouth in 2015 with his wife.
At the February 1974 general election, Kilroy-Silk was elected as a Labour MP for the Ormskirk constituency in Lancashire. He remained its MP until its abolition at the 1983 general election, when he was elected to represent the new Knowsley North seat; he held this until his resignation from the House of Commons in 1986. In an article for The Times in 1975, Kilroy-Silk argued that politics was not "compromises and bargains" or hankering after "a spurious consensus". He wrote that the function of government, particularly a Labour government, was
"to impose its values on society. Its role is creative: to cast, so far as it is able, society in its image". Furthermore, socialists should not be worried about being accused of dictatorial powers; they must go forward with "a tint of arrogance".