Spokesperson for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Spokesperson for Communities and Local Government

Biography

Lord Tony Greaves has been a grass-roots Liberal activist since he joined the Liberals in 1960 (at university at Oxford and at home in Wakefield, Yorkshire). He says that for the past 40 years he has been a "mainstream Grimond-era radical Liberal) and looks with amazement at left-wing friends from the 1960s who have now leap-frogged him to the distant right to cuddle down with New Labour.

He was born and lived as a young child in Bradford but transferred his political allegiances to the North West when living in Manchester many years ago. He was a leading Liberal member of Lancashire County Council for some 25 years (Liberal group leader for a time) and a local Councillor on Colne and Pendle Borough Councils over most of the last three decades of the 20th century (with a spell as leader of Pendle Council).

When he was made a life peer in the list of "working peers" in the spring of 2000 he adopted the territorial designation of Pendle, the famous Lancashire Pennine hill that overlooks much of the mill towns and moors that make up the Borough itself.

Tony was chair of the Union of Liberal Students (ULS) at a time of rising student support for the Liberal Party in the mid-sixties and became one of the leaders of the so-called "red guard" Young Liberal boom in the following years, including a year as national chair of the YLs.

As one of the YLs behind the development of community politics as both a philosophical and campaigning contribution to Liberalism, Tony moved the keystone amendment at the Liberal Assembly in 1970 which committed his party to an approach which was to prove crucial to its survival during the 1970s.

In the ten years to the middle 1980s Tony set up and worked as Organising Secretary of the Association of Liberal Councillors (ALC) from its conveniently central HQ at Hebden Bridge in the West Yorkshire Pennines. During this time the organisation grew from a small desk and phone in a Sunday Schoolroom to a successful national network and resource centre promoting and supporting a massive growth in local Liberal campaigning and numbers of Councillors (from 700 to 2600 during Tony's time with a further doubling since).

For a further five years Tony ran his party's publications company (also from Hebden Bridge). He then took some time out helping the Liberal Democrats win the Ribble Valley by-election before "retiring" to spend time developing a "hobby business" dealing in out-of-print political books, pamphlets and memorabilia - specialising in elections and "everything Liberal".

Since, to his amazement, he was transported to the red benches, he has kept this going - and discovered a new market and source of books amongst many of the retired politicians in the House!

Tony has found that the Lords is "a good forum to pursue many of the local government interests that have taken up half my life". But it is also a place in which he has been able to pick up many of his old "very Liberal interests and causes" such as immigration and asylum seekers and international development.

"I was also thrilled to be able to help to get the Countryside and Rights of Way Act into law and perhaps repay a little of the huge amount I have got from the mountains and moorlands of this country, over so many years, as a climber, hill walker, geographer and botanist".

Tony speaks in the Lords on environment, food and rural affairs (DEFRA).

He claims he remains what he has always been "a critical but loyal party person - doing my best for the party and for Liberalism". He fervently believes the Lords should be democratically elected by STV. In the meantime he says he may be a Tony - but he'll never be a crony!

Lord Greaves is spokesperson in the Lords for Communities and Local Government, and for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.