About Dick Taverne
Dick Taverne, Baron Taverne (18 October 1928 – 25 October 2025) was a British politician and life peer who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Lincoln from 1962 to 1974. A member of the Liberal Democrats, he was a Labour MP until his deselection in 1972, following which he resigned his seat and won the subsequent by-election in 1973 as a Democratic Labour candidate. Taverne's 1973 victory in Lincoln was short-lived; despite retaining his seat at the February 1974 general election, Labour regained the seat at the October 1974 general election, by the future cabinet minister Margaret Beckett. However, his success opened the possibility of a realignment on the left of British politics, which took shape in 1981 as the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which Taverne joined. He later joined the Liberal Democrats when the SDP merged with the Liberal Party. Taverne sat as a Liberal Democrat life peer in the House of Lords from 1996 until 2025. == Early life and career == Taverne was born in Sumatra on 18 October 1928, and was a Dutch national by birth; he was naturalised as British at age 21. Educated at Charterhouse School, and then Balliol College, Oxford, he graduated in Philosophy and Ancient History, qualified as a barrister in 1954 and became a Queen's Counsel (QC) in 1965. Taverne unsuccessfully contested Putney as the Labour Party candidate at the 1959 general election, and was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lincoln at a by-election in March 1962. Under Harold Wilson's premiership in the 1960s, he served as a Home Office Minister from 1966 to 1968, Minister of State at the Treasury from 1968 to 1969 and then as Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 1969 to 1970.
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