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Alan Arthur Johnson (born 17 May 1950) is a British former politician who served as Secretary of State for Education and Skills from 2006 to 2007, Secretary of State for Health from 2007 to 2009, Home Secretary from 2009 to 2010, and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2011. A member of the Labour Party, he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle from 1997 to 2017.
Johnson served in the Cabinet during both the Tony Blair government and Brown ministry. He served under Tony Blair as Minister of State for Universities from 2003 to 2004, as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2004 to 2005, and as President of the Board of Trade from 2005 to 2006.
In May 2023, Johnson was announced as the next Chancellor of the University of Hull. He succeeded Virginia Bottomley in July.
Johnson passed the eleven-plus exam and attended Sloane Grammar school in Chelsea, now part of Pimlico Academy, and left school at the age of 15. He then worked at Tesco before becoming a postman at 18. He was interested in music and joined two pop music bands. Johnson joined the Union of Communication Workers, becoming a branch official. He joined the Labour Party in 1971 and has described his views at the time as democratic socialist, having drawn ideological inspiration from studying George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four in school, although he also considered himself a Marxist ideologically aligned with the Communist Party of Great Britain. A full-time union official from 1987, he became General Secretary of the union in 1992.
Before entering parliament Johnson was a member of Labour's National Executive Committee. During this time he was the only major union leader to support the abolition of Clause IV.
Johnson, along with other ministers in Tony Blair's government, and many other MPs, attracted much criticism for voting on 18 March 2003 for the Iraq war: "to use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction" leading to the UK joining the US invasion of Iraq two days later. He responded to such criticism on 21 February 2007 by saying "The whole cabinet believed the intelligence we were presented with and we made our case to the British people based on it in good faith. As we all now know, that intelligence was wholly wrong. We will be judged historically as to whether getting rid of Saddam Hussein, despite all the consequences, was a positive thing or that the consequences outweigh the positives of getting rid of a brutal tyrant."
In September 2004, Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed Johnson to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions following resignation of Andrew Smith. Following the 2005 election, Johnson was initially announced on 6 May 2005 as being "Secretary of State for Productivity, Energy and Industry", but after just a week, on 13 May, it was declared that the new title would not be used, after widespread derision of the new name, because the abbreviation for Johnson's title, Productivity, Energy and Industry Secretary, would have been "PENIS". The department's old name was kept and Johnson served as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. On 5 May 2006, one day after the 2006 local elections, his brief was changed to that of Secretary of State for Education and Skills, replacing Ruth Kelly.
When there was a problem with C. difficile at hospitals managed by the Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, they dismissed their "blameless" chief executive "both unlawfully ... and unfairly" and agreed to pay her £250,000, much less than the sum that they were told that defending a case for unfair dismissal would cost. When the proposed payment became known, Johnson intervened and the Department of Health ordered the trust to withhold more than two-thirds of the severance payment, although its director general of finance, performance and operations said that "it was 'not unfair'" that she should receive the money. When the case came to the Court of Appeal, the payment was restored in a judgement that was highly critical of the Department, including quoting her complaint that Johnson had made "personal comments made about me ... without any reference to the Trust, or informing me, ... regarding my severance value and its non-payment".
In October 2009, Johnson sacked the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), Professor David Nutt. Nutt had accused the government of "distorting" and "devaluing" research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs, criticising it for making political decisions with regard to drug classifications in rejecting the scientific advice to downgrade MDMA (Ecstasy) from a class A drug, and rejecting the scientific advice not to reclassify cannabis from class C to class B drug. Johnson wrote to the professor: "It is important that the government's messages on drugs are clear and as an advisor you do nothing to undermine public understanding of them. I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as Chair of the ACMD". In January 2010, Professor Nutt established the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, with the aim of publishing honest drug information. By 2 April 2010, seven members of the ACMD had resigned.
In February 2010, it came out in court that MI5 had known that Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, had been tortured or mistreated by the American services, despite earlier statements to the contrary. In response, Johnson insisted that the media coverage of the torture had been "baseless, groundless accusations". He also said Government lawyers had not forced the judiciary to water down criticism of MI5, despite an earlier, draft ruling by Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls that the Security Service had failed to respect human rights, deliberately misled parliament, and had a "culture of suppression" that undermined government assurances about its conduct.
Having been touted in the media as a possible successor to outgoing Labour leader Gordon Brown, Johnson announced to the BBC on 12 May 2010 that he would not be standing in the forthcoming leadership contest, and would instead be backing David Miliband.
In November 2014, amid criticism within the party of its leader Ed Miliband, Johnson again denied speculation that he was a potential leadership candidate.
A critic of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, just before Corbyn was elected leader in 2016 for the second time, Johnson told Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson of The Times: "He is totally incompetent and incapable of being the leader of a political party and he knows it. Corbyn was 'useless' in the EU referendum campaign." Concerning moderates like himself: "We’ve got to recapture this party again otherwise it’s dead and finished and gone". Johnson stood down at the 2017 general election. He was succeeded as MP by Emma Hardy.
In January 2020, he appeared as a contestant on reality singing show The Masked Singer dressed as a pharaoh.
In May 2023, he was appointed as Chancellor of the University of Hull and was installed on 1 July.
His second volume of memoirs, Please, Mister Postman (2014), dealt with Johnson's time as a postman and as a union representative. It won the Specsavers National Book Awards "Autobiography of the Year".
His third volume of memoirs, The Long and Winding Road (2016), covered Johnson's time as a politician in the UK Parliament.
His fourth and final volume of memoirs, In My Life: A Music Memoir (2018), covered Johnson's lifelong interest in music.
The titles of all four of his autobiographical books are titles of songs written or performed by The Beatles.
His hobbies include music, tennis, reading, cooking, football, and radio. He supports Queens Park Rangers F.C..
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Categories: 1950 Births, Living People, 21st-century English Memoirists, British Postmen, British Secretaries Of State For Education, General Secretaries Of The Communication Workers Union, General Secretaries Of The Union Of Communication Workers, Labour Party Mps For English Constituencies, Members Of The General Council Of The Trades Union Congress, Members Of The Privy Council Of The United Kingdom, Ministers For Universities Of The United Kingdom, New Labour, One Nation Labour, People Associated With The University Of Hull, People From Paddington, Politicians From Kingston Upon Hull, Politics Of The East Riding Of Yorkshire, Presidents Of The Board Of Trade, Secretaries Of State For Health, Secretaries Of State For The Home Department, Secretaries Of State For Work And Pensions, Uk Mps 1997–2001, Uk Mps 2001–2005, Uk Mps 2005–2010, Uk Mps 2010–2015, Uk Mps 2015–2017
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