David Hallam was the Member of the European Parliament for the counties of Hereford, Shropshire and the Wyre Forest district of Worcestershire, England, in the 1994-1999 European Parliament.
David Hallam was an active member of the Agricultural and Rural Affairs Committee and played an important part in the European Union's response to the BSE crisis which affected British farming during his term of office.
Outside of the European Parliament's chamber and committee rooms, David Hallam was the President of the monthly Prayer Breakfast .
David Hallam was born in Hackney, London , on 13 June 1948 in King Edwards Road. Shortly afterwards his family moved to Presburg Street to live in a pre-fab built on the site of a "doodle-bug" (V1) rocket bomb site from the Second World War. He attended the local LCC Rushmore School and on a Sunday the Paragon Hall Plymouth Brethren Sunday School in Glyn Road.
The family later moved to Marcon Court in Amhurst Road, a new development again built on a Second World War bomb site by Hackney Council. David then moved to Upton House Secondary School, having failed his 11+ examination. Nevertheless David achieved three good "A" levels and went to the University of Sussex to study Sociology. During his "A" level studies David become a committed Christian an began attending St Paul's Anglican Church in Homerton.
At Sussex David became Chairman of the Labour Club and active in student union politics during the turbulent years of the late 1960s.
He then began a career in local govenment working for East Sussex County Council , Birmingham City Council and Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council. During this period however he was very politically active, first in Brighton and later in Smethwick which culminated in his election to Sandwell Metropolitan Council in 1975 and his first attempt to get into Westminster as Labour candidate for Solihull in 1979.
In 1984 David stood for the European Parliament in the Shropshire and Stafford constituency, he stood again in 1989 and was finally elected on revised boundaries in 1994.
David Hallam was one of many Labour Party members who opposed Labour leaders' Tony Blair's re-writing of the common ownership Clause IV in the Labour Party constition. From then on he was something of a "marked man" as far as the neo-liberal Labour leadership was concerned. In addition he was very sceptical about the benefits of bio-technology, especially its patenting, and obviously expressed his opposition to religious intolerance.
In 1998 the Labour government introduced the socalled "regional list" system and every effort was made to ensure that Hallam and others were not re-elected in 1999.
Since leaving the European Parliament David Hallam has continued with his work as an unpaid Methodist preacher. He has earned his living in public relations and in 2003 published his first book "Eliza Asbury" which chronicled the life of the mother of Francis Asbury, the first Bishop of the Methodist Church in the United States.
External Links