Nethermere v. Gardiner where he unsuccessfully defended employers that had refused holiday pay to employees at a trouser factory. Rentoul records that, according to his lawyer friends, Blair was much less concerned about which party he was affiliated with than about his aim of becoming Prime Minister.
Blair married Booth, a practising Roman Catholic and future Queen's Counsel, on 29 March 1980. They have four children (Euan, Nicky, Kathryn and Leo). Leo (born 20 May 2000) was the first legitimate child born to a serving Prime Minister in over 150 years, since Francis Russell was born to Lord John Russell on 11 July 1849.
Although the Blairs stated that they had wished to shield their children from the media, their children's education was a cause of political controversy. All three attended the Roman Catholic London Oratory School, criticised by left-wingers for its selection procedures, instead of a poorly-performing Roman Catholic school in Labour-controlled Islington, where they then lived, in Richmond Avenue. There was further criticism when it was revealed that Euan received private coaching from staff from Westminster School.
Early political career
Blair joined the Labour Party shortly after graduating from Oxford in 1975. During the early 1980s, he was involved in Labour politics in Hackney South and Shoreditch, where he aligned himself with the "soft left" of the party. He unsuccessfully attempted to secure selection as a candidate for Hackney Borough Council. Through his father-in-law, the actor Tony Booth, he contacted Labour MP Tom Pendry to ask for help in pursuing a Parliamentary career. Pendry gave him a tour of the House of Commons and advised him to stand for selection as a candidate in the forthcoming by-election in the safe Conservative seat of Beaconsfield, where Pendry knew a senior member of the local party. Blair was chosen as the candidate; at the Beaconsfield by-election he won only 10% of the vote and lost his deposit, but he impressed Labour Party leader Michael Foot and acquired a profile within the party. In contrast to his later centrism, Blair described himself in this period as a Socialist. A letter that he wrote to Foot in July 1982, eventually published in June 2006, gives an indication of his outlook at this time.[18]
In 1983 Blair found that the newly created constituency of Sedgefield, a notionally safe Labour seat near where he had grown up in Durham, had no Labour candidate. Several sitting MPs displaced by boundary changes were interested in securing selection to fight the seat. He found a branch that had not made a nomination and arranged to visit them. With the crucial support of John Burton, he won their endorsement; at the last minute he was added to the shortlist and won the selection over displaced sitting MP Les Huckfield. Burton later became his agent and one of his most trusted and longest-standing allies.
Blair's election literature in the 1983 UK general election endorsed left-wing policies that the Labour Party advocated in the early 1980s. He called for Britain to leave the EEC, though he had told his selection conference that he personally favoured continuing membership. He also supported unilateral nuclear disarmament as a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
In 2004, he released his autobiography, My Life, and more recently has been involved in his wife Hillary's 2008 presidential campaign and in that of President Barack Obama
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Cherie Booth spares religious man jail
Labels: equality
Complaint after Cherie Booth spares religious man jail
The National Secular Society said Ms Booth gave an "unjust" sentence
A secularist group has lodged an official complaint against Cherie Booth QC after she spared a man from prison because he was religious.
Shamso Miah, 25, of Redbridge, east London, broke a man's jaw following a row in a bank queue.
Sitting as a judge, Ms Booth - wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair - said she would suspend his sentence on the basis of his religious belief.
The National Secular Society claims her attitude was discriminatory and unjust.
'Acceptable behaviour'
Inner London Crown Court heard that Miah, 25, of Redbridge, east London, went into a bank in East Ham and became embroiled in a dispute with Mohammed Furcan about who was next in the queue.
Miah - who had just been to a mosque - punched Mr Furcan inside the bank, and again outside the building.
Ms Booth told Miah that violence had to be taken seriously, but said she would suspend his prison sentence because he was a religious person and had not been in trouble before.
She added: "You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour."
The National Secular Society has complained to the Office for Judicial Complaints, suggesting that Mrs Blair acted in an unjust and discriminatory way, and suggesting that she might have treated a non-religious person less leniently
