Les Huckfield is both an activist and academic. He has a strong political background as a former Member of the House of Commons, of the European Parliament and Labour’s National Executive Committee. Before academia he specialised in European funding.
He is active in the European Parliament Former Members’ Association, with access to a range of EU services and offices.
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Read MoreLes Huckfield supervises post doctoral students at Glasgow Caledonian University and also teaches Economics at the Open University. He has extensive experience from his European Union involvement and trade union and third sector activism, known especially for his work on social enterprise and cooperatives.
He was a Director of SENSCOT (Social Enterprise Network Scotland) from 2009 till 2020 and was a Director of the Sheffield Cooperative Development Group from 2018 till this year. Throughout 2018 and 2019 he was a member of Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP’s Implementation Group for Doubling the Size of the Cooperative Economy.
He has published book chapters and articles in academic journals and reports for trade unions, the Labour and Cooperative Parties. His book “How Blair Killed the Coops” was published in November 2021 by Manchester University Press (see further details below).
He was MP for Nuneaton and Bedworth, near Coventry, from 1967 till 1983, representing coal miners and car workers, and Member of the European Parliament for Merseyside East, representing the Westminster Parliamentary Constituencies between Liverpool and Manchester, from 1984 till 1989.
He was Under Secretary of State in the Department of Industry from 1976 till 1979 and a member of the Labour Party National Executive Committee from 1978 till 1982. After setting up Leslie Huckfield Research in September 1997, he has worked on EU projects and funding for colleges, universities, the third sector and trade unions in Merseyside, the West Midlands and Scotland.
In this detailed examination of social enterprise development under New Labour, Huckfield’s new book offers an alternative narrative of social enterprise in the UK and shows how communities have been denied the restoration of local economic and social democracy.
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