John Howarth (British politician)

His father, also John Howarth, worked in the coal industry first as a footplateman and later as a traffic foreman on the Bowes railway. His mother Freda Howarth (Robinson) was the daughter of Joe Robinson, a pit deputy at Heworth Colliery. Joe had served in the Northumberland Fusileers Regiment in the First World War and was wounded at Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres). During the Second World Ward Freda was an industrial conscript working as a welder in munintions production. John Howarth cites his Grandfather as particularly influential on his early political thinking.

He grew up on the Ellen Wilkinson Estate, a 1950s Council housing development now part of Gateshead Borough and attended Wardley Infant and Junior Schools and Highfield Comprehensive, a purpose-built comprehensive school that opened in 1970 on the abolition of selection at 11 plus. The school was later to be re-named Thomas Hepburn Community School. He studied Economics at the University of Essex and after graduating gained a Master's degree in the History and Theory of 20th Century Art. His MA thesis was on work of the German Director, Werner Herzog.

He became involved with Labour Party during the February 1974 General Election which his father was on strike. He continued to be involved with Labour election campaigns in October 1974 and the Newcastle Central By-election of 1976 before university. In student politics he became National Secretary of Labour Students. On leaving the Student World in 1982 Howarth became a Labour Party constituency organiser in Basingstoke and Secretary of the Hampshire County Labour Party.

Having progressed to Labour's Southern Regional Office (covering what is now the South East Region) he left Labour's staff in 1988 to work in the private sector and settled in Reading. He joined an SME providing software and IT solutions working on marketing communications eventually becoming Director of Marketing and a Partner. In 1995 he founded his own business providing marketing consulting services and later brand, design and business communications. He became a member of the Chartered Society of Designers and also worked in public affairs.

In 1990 he became Chair of the Reading Labour Party which encompassed both of the town's parliamentary constituencies and the Reading local government functions. In 1993 he contested Redlands Division on Berkshire County Council, winning the seat comfortably. On the County Council he served as Chair of the Transport Committee and later as Vice-Chair of the Environment Committee as part of the Labour-Liberal Democrat Administration. Howarth was a strong advocate of the abolition of Berkshire County Council and its replacement with Unitary local government. He served five years on Berkshire until it was dissolved in April 1998. He stood down as Chair of Reading Labour Party in 1994 and became its Press Spokesman, a role he carried out for the next ten years. In 2001 he was elected to Reading Borough Council, by now a unitary council, for Park Ward and was re-elected in 2004. Serving for a year as Deputy lead on sport and cultural services, he became Cabinet Member responsible for Transport and Strategic Planning and was appointed to the South East England Regional Assembly. He became a member of the UK Government's Regional Transport Board for the South East, the Joint Regional European Committee, the Regional Planning Committee and the Berkshire Join Strategic Planning Committee. Howarth was also Chair of the Reading Station Project Board, which brought together stakeholders in the successful bid to attract funding for the expansion of the Great Western mainline at Reading Station. In 2007 he stood down from the Council.

In 1994 John Howarth was Labour Candidate for the Thames Valley coming close to unseating the Conservative MEP in what was not regarded as a Labour target. He contested South East England as a member of the Labour list at the first election using the proportional representation in 1999. In 2013 he put himself forward for the South East Region once again. The ordering of the list was determined by ballots of Labour members - one male and one female. John Howarth won the male ballot and was placed second on the list, the decision having been made prior to the selection that the winner of the female ballot would be top of the list.

In the 2014 European Elections Labour fell short of the necessary share of the vote to secure two MEPs in the Region. Anneliese Dodds, who had been placed first on the Labour list, represented the seat until 9 June 2017 when she was elected as MP for Oxford East in the 2017 General Election.

He serves as a full member of the European Parliament's Budget Committee and as a substitute member of the Regional Development Committee. He is a member of the Parliament's Delegation to Cariforum and is a substitute member of the EU-former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Joint Parliamentary Committee.

John Howarth is married to Jane Coney, a designer. He has two children from his first marriage. and a step daughter. John enjoys cooking, digital art, swims and plays golf. He has followed Newcastle United since boyhood but came to follow Reading F.C. as his "second team".