Dennis Skinner

Dennis Skinner hails from Clay Cross, Derbyshire, and was the longest continuously-serving Labour Party MP, as MP for Bolsover from 1970 – 2019.

He is the third of nine children; his father was a coal miner and his mother a cleaner. At the age of ten Dennis won a scholarship to attend Tupton Hall Grammar School after passing the eleven-plus a year early and later went on to become a miner. In 1964, aged 32 and following 20 years of coal mining, he became the youngest-ever president of the Derbyshire National Union of Mineworkers.

Dennis served as a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee for thirty years and is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs.

Dennis attended Ruskin College in 1967 after completing a preparatory course run by the National Union of Mineworkers at the University of Sheffield.