Stuart Bell

Stuart Bell is a former colliery clerk, newspaper reporter, typist, shorthand-typist, secretary, novelist and short-story writer. He is a Barrister-at-Law, who has lived and worked in Paris, has been a Labour Member of Parliament since 1983, and a member of Her Majesty’s government 1997-2010.

He was awarded the Freedom of the City of London in 2003 and made a Knight Bachelor in the 2004 New Year’s Honours List for his services to Parliament. For his services to Franco-British relations, he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur in April 2006.

His Early Life

Stuart Bell was born in a pit-village in North-West Durham, in a fold of the Durham hills as he likes to describe it. He was born in Slum Alley, so called because it was the oldest street in the village, one room upstairs one down, with no electricity and no running water, pulled down shortly after his birth.

He came from mining folk and his father worked fifty-one years in the pit. His early life and his knowledge of the pit would feature in his writings and his last book of short stories describes events in his seventh year. This book is called The Ice Cream Man and now runs to two editions. Stuart went to the local primary school and from there to Hookergate Grammar School (now known as Hookergate School). He went from there to the colliery office and wanting to be a writer from there to the Blaydon Courier, a local weekly paper. He left for Fleet Street, London, when he was eighteen, but being too young to be employed as a newspaper reporter wrote freelance, attended Pitmans College, Southampton Row, to learn shorthand, worked as a temporary typist and shorthand typist.

He went to Paris as a writer and took up work as secretary to an American lawyer. He wrote Days That Used to Be, the story of a pit closure and the fight to save the pit, based on true life events, and when the book failed to find a publisher he taught himself law in the evening and five years later was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn, London. He lived and worked in Paris and attended his dinners at Gray’s Inn. He set up his own law practice in Paris on the Avenue des Champs Elysees, later moving to Avenue Montaigne, and in 1977 left Paris to return to England and become a full time Labour politician.

He stood for Hexham in 1979 but was defeated by the sitting MP, Geoffrey Rippon. He became a Newcastle City Councillor in 1980 and served three years on the Council before becoming Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough in 1983. He has served the town ever since, is now in his twenty-eighth year as MP and is on his seventh mandate.

Parliamentary Career

When elected in 1983, with Labour in opposition, he was immediately appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Roy Hattersley, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, and the following year was promoted to the front bench by Neil Kinnock, Leader of the Party. He became the Party’s spokesperson for Northern Ireland, a post he held for three years. He resigned the front bench after the 1987 General Election in order to take up the case of his constituents and their children caught up in the Cleveland Child Abuse Crisis, where ninety-six children were taken from their parents by Cleveland social services. The Crisis took five years of his Parliamentary career and ended when court settlements were reached with the families. Stuart returned to the front bench after the 1993 General Election and would serve five years as the Party’s trade and Industry spokesperson.

After Labour’s victory in 1997, Stuart was appointed Second Church Estates Commission, dealing with matters of church and state, a post he held for thirteen years, becoming the longest Second Church Estates Commissioner in history. He was the only member of Her Majesty’s Government to serve in precisely the same post throughout the tenure of a Labour government. He was also for ten years Chairman of the Finance and Services Committee which manages the Commons’ annual budget. He was also for ten years a member of the House of Commons Commission, the Commission overseeing all matters relating to the Parliamentary estate, and a member of the Estimates Committee with oversight of MPs’ allowances. In 2009, Stuart was instrumental in creating an independent body to oversee these allowances.

Stuart is a founder member of the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body and Chairman of the Franco-British Parliamentary Group, becoming Secretary of the Group after the 2010 General Election.

Writing

Stuart has been a writer since the age of sixteen.

His early novels, When Tomorrow Comes and The Way and the Truth, were not published and he was forty three before his first short story was published in the Evening Standard. He wrote his autobiography in short story form and in three volumes. The first volume, Tony Really Loves Me, tells of his friendship with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and other leading figures, including John Major; his second, Lara’s Theme follows on from this and recounts his friendship with Lara, who may or may not exist, depending on how the reader reads the stories; and his third, Softly in the Dusk, tells among others the sad story of one of his friends, who died in the PanAm terrorist attack in 1989 that brought down the aircraft over Lockerbie, and a happier story of another friend who survived following the attacks in the twin towers in New York on the infamous 9/11.

His collection of short stories, recounting his life in the pit village when aged seven years old, entitled The Ice Cream Man, tells the story of the Italian ice cream man evacuated to Canada at the outbreak of war, exiled as an enemy alien, only to have the liner - The Arandora Star - carrying him and other Italians sunk by a German U-boat, with hundreds killed. There are other stories from his childhood street which move those who have read them. The book is now in its second paperback edition.

His published novels are Days That Used to Be, the story of the pit that is destined to close and the protests against this; Paris 69, the story of a year in the life of a young lawyer in Paris; Binkie’s Revolution and The Honoured Society, two books that are linked but are stand alones Binkie’s Revolution deals with the Russian Revolution, the suffragette movement, and the almost-revolution that took place in England in 1926. The Honoured Society deals with the early Mafia – never so called in the book – conflicts with the Church , and which saw the creation of l’Italia Una.

Stuart has completed a three hundred thousand word novel, which took him four years to write, to be published in three volumes, and entitled Long Night’s Journey, a work of fiction but with as historical background the story of the conflict between Russia and Germany leading to the fall of Berlin in 1945 seen from the different perspectives of Germans and Russians.

He is also author of An Ever Closer Union, a review of the European Union in the light of the failed constitutional treaty, a political guide to the future of the Union; When Salem Came to the Boro, a chronicle of the 1987 Cleveland Child Abuse Crisis,;an Annotated Version of the 1989 Children Act, which saw children’s law definitively changed in the United Kingdom.

His political tracts include How to Abolish the Lords, Raising the Standard, and affirmation of the present voting system in the United Kingdom, and Pathway to the Euro, a route to British entry to the European single currency. He has now completed a twenty-thousand word narrative on the Future of the European Left ,to be published in English and French in spring 2011.

The following titles are available for purchase and download to e-book readers at Amazon.com:

- An Ever Closer Union

- The Ice Cream Man

- Binkie’s Revolution

- The Honoured Society

- Tony Really Loves Me

- Lara’s Theme

- Softly in the Dusk