Glenys Kinnock (1944–2023)

Glenys Kinnock was a Welsh teacher, campaigner, and Labour politician who represented Wales in the European Parliament for fifteen years and served as a government minister for Europe, and then for Africa and the United Nations. A lifelong opponent of apartheid, nuclear weapons, and global poverty, she was often seen as more radical than her husband, the Labour leader Neil Kinnock, and built a political career very much her own.

She was also a long-standing supporter of the humanist movement: a patron of the British Humanist Association (today’s Humanists UK), and a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. When she died in 2023, Humanists UK remembered her as ‘a stalwart supporter of humanist causes both in the UK and internationally’.

Glenys Elizabeth Parry was born on 7 July 1944 in Roade, Northamptonshire, where her father was working on the railway during the war. The family soon returned to their home town of Holyhead on Anglesey, where she grew up speaking Welsh. Her father, a trade unionist who had left school at 13 to join the Merchant Navy, gave her an early education in injustice. As she later recalled, he told her of the misery he had seen in the ports of Africa, including men working in chains on the docks of South Africa, and brought up his children ‘to believe that we had to tackle inequality’.

She studied history and education at University College, Cardiff, where she met Neil Kinnock; they married in 1967. As students they threw themselves into Labour politics, volunteering in 1964 for James Callaghan’s campaign to hold his Cardiff seat, alongside another future humanist, Rhodri Morgan. She joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, inspired in part by a book her father gave her: Bertrand Russell’s warning about nuclear war, Has Man a Future?

For thirty years Kinnock worked as a teacher, first in a grammar school in South Wales and later in London primary schools, where she specialised in children’s literacy. Through her husband’s leadership of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992 she remained an active campaigner in her own right. She spent many hours at vigils outside South Africa House, and in 1987 worked with Trevor Huddleston on the Anti-Apartheid Movement’s conference in Harare on the children of South Africa, which she later called the most important moment of her campaigning life. In 1989 she helped to found the development charity One World Action, which supported partner organisations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in tackling poverty and injustice.

At the age of 50 she entered elected politics herself, winning the European Parliament seat of South Wales East in 1994 with a record majority, and representing Wales until 2009. In Brussels she concentrated on international development and trade, and from 2002 to 2009 was co-president of the joint parliamentary assembly of the European Union and the African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries.

She had planned to retire in 2009, but within weeks Gordon Brown asked her to become Minister for Europe, and she entered the House of Lords as Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead. She went on to serve as Minister for Africa and the United Nations until Labour left office in 2010, and was given responsibility for the government’s work against violence against women overseas.

Kinnock’s support for the humanist movement was public enough to draw fire. In March 2009 the Daily Mail attacked the British Humanist Association over government grants, pointing out that its ‘official supporters’ included ‘Labour Euro MP Glenys Kinnock’. In its published rebuttal, the BHA corrected the article point by point, but on this one it simply replied: ‘This is true.’

In Parliament she was a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, as were her husband and her son, the Labour MP Stephen Kinnock. In 2016 she was among the signatories of an open letter in The Times urging the Prime Minister, Theresa May, to drop plans to let ‘faith’ schools in England select all of their pupils by religion.

In her last years Kinnock lived with Alzheimer’s disease, cared for by her husband, who spoke publicly about the importance of supporting her after her diagnosis. She died peacefully at home in London on 3 December 2023, with Neil Kinnock at her side. Paying tribute, Humanists UK’s Chief Executive said:

Images: Glenys Kinnock as a Member of the European Parliament, © European Union, European Parliament, via Wikimedia Commons; with Michael Cashman and Neil Kinnock at the European Parliament, © European Union, 1998–2026, used with attribution via Wikimedia Commons.