Alan Lee Williams

Who is Alan Lee Williams?

Alan Lee Williams OBE is a former president of the Atlantic Treaty Association, a British Labour Party politician, writer and visiting professor of politics at Queen Mary College, London.

Williams was educated at John Roan School, Greenwich and worked as a journeyman freeman and craft-owning freeman of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen, between 1945 and 1952, before attending Ruskin College, Oxford. He was elected a borough councillor in Greenwich in 1952, at the age of twenty-one, serving until 1955. He worked as the national youth officer of the Labour Party between 1955 and 1962 and then as the National Youth Officer of the United Nations Association between 1962 and 1966. He was chairman of the British National Committee of the World Assembly of Youth for four years.

He first contested Epsom in 1964. He was three times elected Member of Parliament for the marginal seat of Hornchurch, being elected in 1966. He lost to the Conservative John Loveridge in 1970, but regained the seat in the elections of February and October 1974. He was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Rt Hon Denis Healey MP in his role as Defence Secretary from 1967 to 1970. In 1974 he was again appointed as a PPS to the Rt Hon Roy Mason, Defence Secretary, remaining his PPS when Mason was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.