Sir Albert Edward Patrick Duffy KCSG (born 17 June 1920) is a British economist and Labour Party politician.
[3] James and his father, who was also named Patrick, moved to England as migrant agricultural workers in the late 19th and early 20th century.
James worked as a miner in Wigan's Maypole pit, before moving with his family to the mining village of Rossington near Doncaster in South Yorkshire in 1925.
[5] After his plane crashed near Scapa Flow in Orkney, Duffy, still in his early 20s, was given the last rites by a priest; however, despite being registered as 100% disabled, he was successfully treated by the pioneering surgion Harold Gillies and left the forces in 1946 with the rank of Commanding Officer at the Naval School of Air Radar.
[4][6][7] Duffy's interest in politics was stirred whilst he was a student at the London School of Economics; it was there and at Columbia University in New York where he obtained his degree and Doctorate of Law.
[1] Duffy first contested the Parliamentary seat of Tiverton in 1950, when he was completing his studies at the LSE, before he took students – including his future Labour colleague Shirley Catlin, who went on to become Baroness Williams – to Columbia University in New York.
He held Colne Valley until the 1966 general election, when he was defeated by the Liberal Richard Wainwright, despite the national swing to Labour.
He voted for John Silkin in the 1980 leadership election, rather than Michael Foot, the successful candidate from the party's soft left.
[20] In comments directed at Thatcher, amidst heckles from the Conservative benches (and frowns from his own side, whose official line was to support the Prime Minister's stance), he remarked: By appearing hard and unfeeling, or firm and determined, you have spectacularly illuminated for growing bodies of opinion in neighbouring and allied countries, whose comments are flowing in hourly, your government's moral bankruptcy and the colossal and criminal incompetence of Conservative governments of all times in their dealings in Ireland.
[7] Duffy was president of the North Atlantic Assembly (the parliamentary arm of NATO) during the first-time delegations from the Warsaw Pact nations.
He was president of the NATO Assembly at a time when the Cold War came to an end in the late 1980s and early 1990s; it was in this capacity that he also had a private audience with Pope John Paul II, on 9 October 1989.
[4] In 2014, Duffy published his autobiography, Growing Up Irish in Britain, British in Ireland and in Washington, Moscow, Rome and Sydney.