All news on this page courtesy of the The Times & Sunday Times Newspapers, London, UK
ALF MORRIS, a leading campaigner in postwar politics, announced last night that he would retire from Parliament at the general election.
He said: "I had thought and hoped that the next election would come sooner. But as this Parliament could now go its full term and the next promises to do so as well, I feel it will be best for me not to seek re-election. Better to go five minutes too soon than five years too late."
Mr Morris, Labour MP for Manchester Wythenshawe for 32 years, will be 68 today. He played a key role in the attempts to compensate the victims of Thalidomide, to improve war widows' pensions, to assist those harmed in the Barlow Clowes scandal and to help haemophiliacs infected with HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated NHS blood products.
His most abiding legacy, however, will be the transformation he brought to the lives of Britain's 6.5 million disabled people. His Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Bill, which became law in 1970 and was regarded as a breakthrough in basic rights for the disabled, was the first legislation of its kind in the world and was copied by many countries. Later, as the first Minister for Disabled People, he brought in the mobility allowance, the invalid care allowance and the disabled housewives' allowance.
In 1991 he also drafted the Civil Right (Disabled Persons) Bill to outlaw discrimination on grounds of disability, the full implementation of which remains the target of groups representing disabled people.
Mr Morris, who used a Private Member's Bill to repatriate to the people of Australia the original of their constitution, has been awarded both the Order of Australia and the Queen's Service Order by the New Zealand Government. He has been a Privy Counsellor for 18 years and remains the chairman of the managing trustees of the parliamentary contributory pension fund.
He told his constituency party last night that his decision had been taken with regret, but promised to continue doing all he could to hasten the return of a Labour government and to advance the causes to which he had devoted his parliamentary life.
Mr Morris's determination to be a champion of the disabled owed much to the experience of his father, who was injured in the First World War and suffered many disabilities from severe leg injuries to partial blindness, as well as the effects of poison gas. George Morris later found it impossible to find work and died at the age of 44 in 1935 as, in the words of his son, "one of the tubercular poor".
The family of Irene Morris, the MP's wife, had similar experiences of disability and poverty and on becoming an MP his understanding of the plight of the disabled was heightened by observing the problems of many of his constituents.
Mr Morris is leading the campaign to help veterans of the Gulf War and their families, suffering from what they say is Gulf War syndrome.
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