Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (born 1961) is an English academic, social thinker and Labour life peer in the House of Lords.

Biography

Glasman was born in Walthamstow, London, the son of Rivie and Collie Glasman. He was educated at Clapton Jewish Day School and Jewish Free School from where he won an exhibition to study Modern History at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He read his MA at the University of York and undertook a PhD at the European University Institute in Florence. He is an authority on the Hungarian economist and sociologist Karl Polanyi, whom he cites as a major influence on his politics.

Glasman is a senior lecturer in political theory at London Metropolitan University, and Director of its Faith and Citizenship Programme. Prior to his elevation he worked for ten years with London Citizens and through this developed an expertise in community organising.

Political beliefs

Having joined the Labour Party in 1976, Glasman re-engaged with Labour politics after his mother's death in 2008. On 19 November 2010, it was announced that he would be created a life peer. His elevation to the Lords was considered something of a surprise, with Glasman admitting he was "completely shocked" by the appointment. On 4 February 2011, He was created Baron Glasman, of Stoke Newington and of Stamford Hill in the London Borough of Hackney, and was introduced in the House of Lords on 8 March 2011, where he will sit on the Labour benches.

Glasman is the inventor of the term 'Blue Labour', which he defines as a small-C conservative form of socialism that attempts to return to the roots of the pre-1945 Labour Party through encouraging the political involvement of voluntary groups from trade unions through churches to football clubs.

In April 2011, Glasman called on the Labour Party to establish a dialogue with sympathisers of the far-right English Defence League (EDL), in order "to build a party that brokers a common good, that involves those people who support the EDL within our party. Not dominant in the party, not setting the tone of the party, but just a reconnection with those people that we can represent a better life for them, because that's what they want"

Selected works

• Unnecessary Suffering: Managing Market Utopia (Verso, 1996)

External links

• Personal page at London Metropolitan University
• "Confronting the City" from Red Pepper
• "The City of London and its Tax Haven Empire": presentation by Nicholas Shaxson and Maurice Glasman at the LSE, 1 February 2011. Glasman begins speaking approximately 31 min into the recording, and jointly answers questions after the 54 min mark.