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Roger James Gale (born 20 August 1943) is a British politician. He is the Conservative Member of Parliament for North Thanet in Kent.

Early life

Gale was born in Poole, Dorset and was educated at the Southbourne Preparatory School, and the Hardye's School, Dorchester. He completed his education at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

He is the only former pirate radio disc-jockey to become a Member of Parliament.[1] He joined Radio Caroline North in August 1964, where he stayed until January 1965. In June of the same year he joined Caroline South, before becoming programme director at Radio Scotland. He worked as the personal assistant to the general manager at Universal Films for nine years from 1962, before joining the BBC in 1972 as a reporter for Radio London, becoming a producer of current affairs in 1973. He became the producer of Radio 1's Newsbeat, then the producer of Radio 4's Today programme from 1973-6. In 1976, he was appointed Director of BBC Children's Television. He left the BBC in 1979 and joined Thames Television as a senior producer on children's television where he remained until his election to parliament.

Parliamentary career

He joined the Conservative Party in 1964, and was elected as the vice chairman of the Conservative Association in Holborn and St Pancras in 1971. He was selected to contested Birmingham Northfield at the 1982 by-election caused by the suicide of the sitting Conservative MP Jocelyn Cadbury. He narrowly lost the by-election to Labour's John Spellar by just 289 votes. He was elected to the House of Commons at the 1983 General Election for the newly drawn Kent seat of Thanet North. He won the seat with a majority of 14,545 and has remained the MP there since. His Labour Party opponent in the 1983 election was Cherie Blair, wife of the former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

He served as a member of the home affairs select committee in 1990 and was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the successive ministers of state at the Ministry of Defence Archie Hamilton and Jeremy Hanley following the 1992 General Election until 1994. He was a member of the broadcasting select committee from between the general elections of 1997 and 2005. He has been a member of the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen since 1997. He a vice chairman of the Conservative Party under the leadership of Iain Duncan Smith from 2001–2003 with responsibility for presentation.

Gale has expressed strong views in support of capital punishment, voicing it as the solution to knife crime¹ though, unlike many Conservative MPs, he supports the ban on fox hunting. He is also a eurosceptic.² He is a founding member and current president of Conservative Animal Welfare, a group of Conservative MPs and MEPs interested in the promotion animal welfare.

Personal life

Roger Gale has been married three times, firstly to Wendy Dawn Bowman in 1964, whom he divorced in 1967, in 1971 he married Susan Linda Sampson and they had a daughter - they too divorced in 1980. Later the same year he married Susan Gabrielle Marks and they have two sons and a host of pets. He is a member of three trade unions the National Union of Journalists; the Equity and the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph and Theatre Union (BECTU). He has activly supported the Conservative Trade Unionists organisation, being a long serving President of the Greater London branch. He has travelled widely including to Norway, United States of America, The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Cuba, Cyprus, Zambia, Mongolia, South Africa, Mozambique, Ghana, Kenya, Macedonia, and Botswana.

References

External links

• His website
• Roger Gale profile from conservatives.com
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Roger Gale MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Roger Gale MP
• BBC Politics page
• Conservative Animal Welfare

News items

• Critcising Tsunami three minute silence in January 2005

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 29 December 2008, at 22:29.

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