Paddy Ashdown

Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton -sub - Hamdon, GCMG, KBE, PC ( born February 27, 1941 in New Delhi, India ), commonly known as Paddy Ashdown, is a British politician, who between 1988 and 1999 Chairman the Liberal Democrats and from 2002 to 2006 High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Nations in Bosnia - Herzegovina was. He is a life peer.

Ashdown was born the eldest of seven children in New Delhi in India, where his father was the 14th Punjab & Riasc served as a captain in the Indian army. He spent most of his childhood in Northern Ireland, where he came to his nickname Paddy. He received at the Bedford School in England his training. Between 1959 and 1972 he served as an officer in the Royal Marines in special forces command as melee specialist and as frogmen. After his retirement from the Navy he worked for the British Foreign Office, in the industry and as a youth worker before he was elected in 1983 as a member of the Liberal party as MP for Yeovil constituency in the House of Commons. Allegations that he had worked for MI6, as he had worked in the 1970s as a diplomat in Geneva, are not commented upon by him.

In Parliament he was the spokesman of the Alliance SDP Liberals of Trade and Industry, and later of Education. After the merger of the former Liberal Party with the SDP in 1988, he was Chairman of the SLDP and remained so after the party, renamed the Liberal Democrats. He led the Liberal Democrats in the national elections of 1992 and 1997.

As chairman, he was a proponent of co-operation between the Liberal Democrats and "New Labour" and regularly attended secret meetings with Tony Blair in part to the planning of a coalition government. After Labour's victory in 1997 a united Cabinet Committee met - the Jenkins Commission with the Liberal Democrat peer Roy Jenkins as chairman - together to consider electoral reform, Ashdown's key demand. The plan to bring the Liberal Democrats on the government sat down under Ashdown's published diaries gone, but failed because of the resistance of the older Labour ministers.

Ashdown came back in 1999 as Chairman and was succeeded by Charles Kennedy. Ashdown was knighted in 2001 and elevated to a life peer as Baron Ashdown of Norton -sub - Hamdon, of Norton -sub - Hamdon in the County of Somerset with seat in the House of Lords, after he had resigned from the House of Commons abandoned before.

After leaving British politics, he took over on 27 May 2002 the post of High Representative in Bosnia - Herzegovina. Already in the 1990s he had long waited for an international intervention in the Balkan region. He has succeeded in this established by the Dayton location Wolfgang Petrich. His tenure ended on 31 January 2006.

Ashdown is married, has two children and two grandchildren. He speaks several languages, including fluent Mandarin Chinese.

Works

• The Ashdown Diaries vol 1 1988-1997 ISBN 0-14-029775-8
• The Ashdown Diaries vol 2 1997-1999 ISBN 0-14-029776-6