Denis MacShane

Denis MacShane has been a Labour MP since 1994. He was deputy foreign secretary and Minister for Europe under Tony Blair. After graduating from Oxford he worked for the BBC and was the youngest ever president of the National Union of Journalists. He completed a PhD at London University and in the 1980s worked as an international trade union official which led to being arrested in Poland and South Africa as he worked with independent trade unions against communism and apartheid. He has written biographies of Francois Mitterrand and Edward Heath as well as a number of books and pamphlets on European and global politics. He writes regularly for British, American and continental European newspapers. He is currently a UK delegate to the Council of Europe and represents the Labour Party at the Party of European Socialists. In 2005-2006 he set up and chaired the All-Party Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism.