The British Labor Party politician Neil Kinnock (born 1942) served as a member of Parliament beginning in 1970. He also served as a member of the Labor Party's national executive committee beginning in 1977 and was elected party leader in 1983.

Neil Kinnock was born in Tredegar, South Wales, on March 28, 1942. His father, Gordon Kinnock, began his working life as a coal miner but subsequently changed to work in a steel mill due to a chronic skin disease brought on by the working conditions in the mines. In 1939 he married Mary Howells, who was the district nurse for Tredegar. Both parents were staunch Labor supporters. His first distinct political memory was being taken by his father to hear a speech by Aneuran Bevan, the town's member of Parliament (M.P.). Kinnock joined the Labor Party at the age of 15.

Mary Kinnock saw to it that her son attended the best schools in...