Association of Former Members of Parliament

First, if you are reading this and you are a former Member of the House of Commons but have not yet joined our Association, we would like to hear from you. Please email our office -- or write us a letter to the address in our 'Contact us' page. We look forward to hearing from you.

Few voters or even newspapers ever realise that the average length of service for a Member of Parliament is about 8 years.

Sooner or later the guillotine falls. Either the voters feel like a change and sack them, or their local parties deselect them. Or their constituency boundaries change, or they retire on a pension based on their length of service.

In one general election, in 1997, 164 MPs lost their seats inside two hours at midnight.

Many of them were shown on television with the whoops, cheers and boos of a pop idol arena with their relatives and children watching and silently crying. Their secretaries and staff also lost their jobs too.

What happens to the losers then? Nobody knows. Or even bothers to find out. Many sacked MPs suffer serious problems in getting other jobs. Employers are notoriously wary of setting on staff who may know too much.

Like many other thousands of people who become unemployed they too have the same problems of moving schools, moving houses, getting into debt and applying for benefits.

But so do other people. So there is little sympathy.

Unfortunately, in other jobs the skills and professional experience is transferable. There may be vacancies in the same trade just a few miles away.

But for MPs there are no other Parliamentary factories except in London at Westminster. Workers in all other large companies can meet their friends to help each other. Defeated MPs are isolated scattered and rejected they are single unemployed individuals with no prospects anywhere.

Our Association is not about jobs it is about keeping old soldiers of the regiment together, able to give specialist advice and help for their widowed partners too. Our members are from all parties, ranks and titles, ranging from two former Prime Ministers, two former Speakers of the House of Commons, and former Chancellors and Chief Whips. We have 80 Lords and 40 ex-cabinet ministers in our group. We could, if necessary, form a new government tomorrow and easily run the country.

We also have about 300 other former MPs who were never lucky enough to have a safe seat and who were in and out on the whims and favours of the voters. All of them are tough old birds who know everything there is to know about Parliament and politics, now and then.

We publish our magazine Order Order three times a year and meet in the House of Commons three times to do what all former stars celebrities and well known faces do.
Namely have a drink, put the world to rights, wallow in nostalgia, re-tell old jokes and know exactly what will happen in politics by this time next year.

Miserable we are not.

We have links all over the world especially in Europe and the Commonwealth with similar old hearts politicians and many young journalists, students and even MPs are smart enough to ask wily old birds like us-what comes next?

We welcome any former MPs who want to join us. We will even send a free copy of Order Order and invite you to join our reception on the Terrace.

Please contact our office for details.

Joe Ashton - Chair.
MP for Bassetlaw 1968 - 2001.