Ted Rowlands, Baron Rowlands
In office 13 April 1972 – 14 May 2001 | |
Preceded by | S. O. Davies |
Succeeded by | Dai Havard |
Member of Parliament for Cardiff North | |
In office 31 March 1966 – 29 May 1970 | |
Preceded by | Donald Box |
Succeeded by | Michael Roberts |
Personal details | |
Born | 23 January 1940 |
Nationality | British |
Political party | Labour |
Alma mater | King's College London |
Edward Rowlands, Baron Rowlands
Education
He attended Rhondda Grammar School and Wirral Grammar School, and then King's College London, where he obtained a BA in History in 1962.
Political career
Rowlands was first elected to the Commons at the 1966 general election as Member of Parliament for Cardiff North, but lost his seat at the 1970 election. He was elected to represent Merthyr Tydfil at the 1972 by-election called after the death of the long-standing MP S. O. Davies. Rowlands served as Member of Parliament for Merthyr Tydfil until the constituency boundaries were redrawn and renamed for the 1983 general election, when he was returned for the new Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney constituency. He was returned at three further elections before he stepped down at the 2001 general election.
He had served as a junior minister in
In a debate on the Falklands War on 3 April 1982, Rowlands revealed that the British were reading Argentine diplomatic traffic.[2][3] Rowlands was criticised (but not prosecuted as per parliamentary privilege) for revealing this intelligence source, as the likely result of his disclosure was that the Argentinians would secure their systems and the intelligence would dry up.
Argentine embassies used the same, top of the line, Swiss Crypto AG machine systems as their armed forces, so this was the precise equivalent of publicly announcing, during World War II, that the Allies had broken the Enigma system used by the Nazis. It is unlikely we shall ever know how much damage this betrayal of trust did to national security, but if anyone else than an MP had given the information to the Argentines they would have been prosecuted.[4]
He was appointed a
Lord Rowlands sat on the
References
- ^ "Mr Ted Rowlands (Hansard)". api.parliament.uk. Retrieved 11 May 2021.
- ISSN 0268-4527.
- ^
Edward Rowlands, MP for Merthyr Tydfil (3 April 1982). "Falkland Islands". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Parliament of the United Kingdom: Commons. col. 650.
Last night the [Defence Secretary] asked "How can we read the mind of the enemy?" I shall make a disclosure. As well as trying to read the mind of the enemy, we have been reading its telegrams for many years.
- ISBN 978-0-297-84633-8
- ^ "No. 56595". The London Gazette (Supplement). 15 June 2002. p. 8.
- ^ "No. 57342". The London Gazette. 1 July 2004. p. 8203.
- ^ "Parliamentary career for Lord Rowlands - MPs and Lords - UK Parliament". members.parliament.uk. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
- Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages [better source needed]
- Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs