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Dafydd Elis Elis-Thomas, Baron Elis-Thomas PC AM, (born 18 October 1946) is a Welsh politician and current Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales. He is a member of the House of Lords, a former leader of Plaid Cymru and was made a privy counsellor in 2004.
Personal
He was born in the Priory Hospital in Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire and brought up in the Llandysul area of Ceredigion, and, later, in Llanrwst in the Conwy Valley.
In 1970 he married Elen M. Williams and had three sons. The marriage was later dissolved, and from the mid-1980s until 1992 his partner was Marjorie Thompson, the chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). In 1993 he married Mair Parry Jones, who is head of the translation department at the National Assembly. He currently lives in Llandaf in Cardiff (when working at the National Assembly) and Betws-y-Coed (in his constituency).
Professional career
He was the chair of the Welsh Language Board between 1994 and 1999, and is a former member of the Arts Council of Wales and the British Film Institute where he was Chair of Screen between 1992 and 1999. He was also a director and vice-chair of Cynefin Environmental Ltd. between 1992 and 1999. A former university lecturer, he has also been the president of Bangor University since 2000, as well as currently being a member of the governing body of the Church in Wales.
Political career
[] UK Parliament
Having served as Member of Parliament for the Meirionnydd Westmister constituency between 1974 and 1983, initially as the "Baby of the House", and the Meirionnydd Nant Conwy Westminster constituency since 1983, he was made a life peer in 1992, and changed his surname from Thomas to Elis-Thomas by deed poll, enabling him to take the title Baron Elis-Thomas, of Nant Conwy in the County of Gwynedd.[1]
National Assembly for Wales
As of 2007, Elis-Thomas is also a member and the Presiding Officer (i.e. speaker, ambassador and signer of legislation) of the National Assembly for Wales, where he represented the Meirionnydd Nant Conwy Assembly constituency from 1999 until the 2007 election, and then the Dwyfor Meirionnydd constituency. He has held the position of Presiding Officer since the Assembly's inception in 1999. Making an announcement at a Senedd reception he accepted the position of honorary president of anti-fascist organisation Searchlight Cymru.
Controversy
Lord Elis-Thomas became infamous in Wales for making the following statement to the Western Mail News Paper: "When I sit in my chair in our new debating chamber, I am ashamed when I look out and see before me a sea of white faces. On 12 June 2008 the Jerusalem Post reported that "invited to a reception for newly appointed Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor hosted by another assembly member, Elis-Thomas replied that "I am unwilling to accept the invitation to meet the ambassador, because of my objection to the failure of the State of Israel to meet its international obligations to the Palestinian people of the Holy Lands [sic]. I would invite other colleagues to [do] the same." In stark contrast, Mohammad Asghar, the member who invited Prosor and the first Muslim in the Welsh Assembly and who on 19 October 2007 escaped death in a terrorist explosion in Karachi, Pakistan that killed 130 others, was quoted by the Western Mail paper: "For all my life I've been listening to one side of the facts all of the time. And I thought, in my position in the assembly, it's about time to know the other side of the fence, also. I think there won't be a better person than the Israeli ambassador to tell me the views of Israelis in this whole conflict." The Jerusalem Post commented upon the incident adding "It is not hard to locate the bigotry in Elis-Thomas's behaviour, the cosmic leap from disagreement to deafness" and continued "His excuse - a broad, ill-defined dissatisfaction with Israeli fulfillment of obligations - is targeted at a country that has withdrawn from 89 percent of the land it conquered in 1967, and he fails to deal with the complexity of a Gaza Strip controlled by ruthless radicals who mete out death penalties to gays. Worse, the notion that there is nothing an Israeli could say that would be worth hearing - the language of boycott - seems to be respectable." This led to threats from the Labour Assembly group to have him removed from the post of Presiding Officer [2]
References
- ^ UK Parliament - Alphebetical List of Members
- ^ Labour's warning shot for the Llywydd Friday, 20 June 2008
External links
Offices held
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