Alex Lyon

Alexander Ward Lyon (15 October 1931 – 30 September 1993) was a British Labour politician.

Lyon was educated at West Leeds High School and University College, London. He became a barrister, called to the Bar at Inner Temple in 1954. He was a member of the Bar Council and of the Fabian Society. He was also a Methodist local preacher and secretary of Leeds North West Constituency Labour Party.

Lyon was elected Member of Parliament for the marginal City of York in 1966, having first fought the seat in 1964. He was Minister of State at the Home Office, March 1974 – April 1976, but, as a radical, was sacked by Jim Callaghan.

In 1971 Lyon introduced the United Reformed Church Bill, which became the act which created the United Reformed Church from a union of Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches in England and Wales.

In 1981 he tried to amend a Finance Bill to allow those with a "conscientious objection to paying for expenditure on defence" to pay the military part of their taxes to the then Ministry of Overseas Development.

He was defeated in the 1983 General Election by the Conservative Conal Gregory.

In 1981, Lyon married Clare Short, a civil servant who he had worked with whilst at the Home Office. Short herself later became a Labour MP and cabinet minister, winning Birmingham Ladywood for the first time on the same day Lyon lost his seat.

He died in Milton Keynes in 1993 from Alzheimer's disease, aged 61.

He had two sons and a daughter from a previous marriage.