John Spellar

John Francis Spellar (born 5 August 1947) is a British Labour Party politician and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Warley. He served as a Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office and returned to the backbenches in 2005. Spellar was Comptroller of the Household and the third most senior whip in the Whips' Office between October 2008 and May 2010.

Early life
Spellar was born in Bromley and educated at Dulwich College and St Edmund Hall, Oxford and worked as a trade union official. He was the Political Officer of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU) from 1969 to 1992. As a young union officer he attended, along with John Golding and Roger Godsiff, the St Ermins group of senior trade union leaders who organised to prevent the Bennite left taking over the party in the years 1981-1987.

He was a councillor in the London Borough of Bromley between 1970 and 1974.

Parliamentary career
Spellar stood for the constituency of Bromley at the 1970 general election and came second.

He was first elected to the House of Commons in the Birmingham Northfield by-election, 1982 but lost at the 1983 General Election. At the 1987 general election he stood again for the same seat but was again unsuccessful. Spellar returned to the House of Commons in the 1992 general election becoming the MP for Warley West and was appointed an opposition whip. Following a period as opposition spokesman for Northern Ireland in 1994, he was moved to shadow Defence ministers in 1995.

When Tony Blair formed his government in 1997, Spellar was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, being promoted to become Minister of State for the Armed Forces in 1999. He was appointed to the Privy Council, as Minister of State for Transport in the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions with rights to attend Cabinet. After the 2002 reshuffle, he became Minister of State at the Department for Transport, and moved to the Northern Ireland Office in 2003. He was banned from the offices of both the Mayor of Londonderry and the Mayor of Belfast during that year, because he supported the reinstatement to the British Army of convicted murderers Mark Wright and James Fisher of the Scots Guards. He left the front benches in 2005, but in 2008, he rejoined the government as a whip (Comptroller of the Household) and served until Labour entered opposition in May 2010.

In November 2015, he suggested on BBC Radio 5 Live that his party leader Jeremy Corbyn should resign over the question of whether to conduct air strikes on ISIL in Syria: 'What we’re seeing here is an attempted coup by Jeremy Corbyn and the people around him in the bunker trying to take over the party. It’s unacceptable. What we're seeing here is an attempted coup by a group to try and over-ride and over-run others. It is unacceptable. How does Jeremy Corbyn and his tiny band of Trots in the bunker think they've got the unique view on it all? If anyone should resign after this incident, it should be Jeremy Corbyn'. Speller is a member of the Labour Friends of Israel and has served as vice-chair.

In June 2016 Spellar raised a formal objection to a parliamentary order creating the West Midlands Combined Authority, delaying its creation, because its size had been increased since its proposal and Spellar believed its funding was not clear.

Spellar did not disclose his voting intention in the 2016 European Union membership referendum.

Outside interests
Spellar is a member of the Henry Jackson Society Advisory Council. Spellar is a Director of Labour First