Michael Lavalette

Who is Michael Lavalette?

Michael Lavalette is a member of the Socialist Workers Party and is a local councillor in Preston, Lancashire, England. He was first elected as a Socialist Alliance candidate shortly after the Iraq War began in 2003. In 2007, he was re-elected, this time after standing as a Respect councillor. In the Respect split in 2007 he remained loyal to the SWP and broke with George Galloway. He is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Liverpool Hope University, formerly having worked at both Liverpool and Central Lancashire universities.

Along with Chris Jones, Iain Feguson, and Laura Penketh, he was an author of the Social Work manifesto for a new engaged practice and organiser of the Liverpool and Glasgow conferences of the Social Work Action Network, which stands in the radical social work tradition and seeks to oppose the increased managerialism and privatisation within the social work profession, and to promote social work practice based on principles of social justice.

At the end of 2008 the Social Work Action Network ran a campaign defending social workers in the aftermath of the Baby P tragedy.