Ian Lavery Ian Lavery Ian Lavery (born 6 January 1963) is a British Labour Party politician and former trade union leader from Northumberland who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wansbeck since the 2010 general election. Born and raised in Ashington, Lavery began work in the construction industry after leaving school before becoming a mining apprentice. Noted for being the sole apprentice to refuse to work during the miners' strike of 1984-1985, he gradually rose up the ranks of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and was chosen to succeed Arthur Scargill as NUM President in 2002. Once elected to
Socialist Labour Party (UK) 300 members, which it attributed to the ageing Scargill's withdrawal from public life. According to accounts filed with the Electoral Commission for the year 2014, the Socialist Labour Party had 385 members excluding affiliates. It had an income of around £9,362 and an expenditure of £11,386. Arthur Scargill founded the Socialist Labour Party in 1996 as a reaction to Tony Blair's rewrite of Clause IV in the Labour Party's constitution a year earlier, seen as a final rejection of a commitment to socialism. The SLP advocates the public ownership of leading industries - which had been privatised under Conservative Prime