Denis MacShane (born Josef Denis Matyjaszek; 21 May 1948) is a British former politician, author, commentator and convicted criminal who served as Minister of State for Europe from 2002 to 2005. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Rotherham from 1994 to his forced resignation in 2012.
Born in Glasgow to an Irish mother and Polish father who died from war-related illness in 1958, MacShane was educated on a Middlesex County scholarship at St Benedict's School, Ealing and studied at Merton College, Oxford. He worked as a BBC journalist and trade unionist before completing a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London. He contested the Solihull constituency in October 1974 but was unsuccessful. After failing to be selected to contest a constituency at the 1992 general election, he was elected to parliament for Rotherham at a 1994 by-election. Following the 2001 general election, he was appointer a junior minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In April 2002, he became Minister of State for Europe and was appointed to the Privy Council. He returned to the backbenches following the 2005 general election.
In November 2012, Labour suspended MacShane when the Standards and Privileges Committee found he had submitted 19 false invoices "plainly intended to deceive" the parliamentary expenses authority. The allegations had been investigated for 20 months by the Metropolitan Police. After the Commons upheld the complaint, he announced his intention to resign as MP for Rotherham and from the Privy Council. In November 2013, he pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to false accounting by submitting false receipts for £12,900. On 23 December, he was sentenced to six months in prison. He served four months of his sentence in HM Prison Belmarsh and HM Prison Brixton, and the rest by wearing an electronic tag.
MacShane was born on 21 May 1948 in Glasgow as Josef Denis Matyjaszek to an Irish mother, Isobel MacShane, and Jozef Matyjaszek, a Pole who had fought in the Second World War and remained in exile, taking British nationality in 1950. He was educated at the independent St Benedict's School in Ealing, before going on to study at Merton College, Oxford.
MacShane worked for the BBC from 1969 to 1977, including as a newsreader and reporter on Wolverhampton Wanderers for BBC Radio Birmingham. He changed his surname to his mother's maiden name at the request of his employers. He was fired by the BBC after using a fake name to call the radio phone-in programme he worked on at the time. During the call, MacShane accused leading Conservative politician Reginald Maudling, who had been forced to resign as a frontbencher after accusations of financial impropriety in 1972, of being a crook. The MP threatened to sue as a result.
MacShane supported the Solidarity trade union in Poland, where he was arrested in 1982 for attending a demonstration and deported. He became an activist for the National Union of Journalists and later its president 1978 to 1979. He was policy director of the International Metal Workers' Federation from 1980 to 1992, and he completed a PhD in international economics at Birkbeck, University of London in 1990.
MacShane first contested a parliamentary seat at the October 1974 general election, where he failed to win Solihull. In 1984, he was on the short list for Labour Party Communications Director, but Peter Mandelson was appointer instead. For the 1992 general election, he attempted to secure a nomination for the Coventry South East constituency, then Neath, and finally Rotherham, though all the attempts were unsuccessful.
MacShane was elected to the House of Commons in the 1994 Rotherham by-election. He was a member of the Deregulation Select Committee 1996–1997, and served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to a succession of ministers in the 1997–2001 Parliament.
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office
Following the 2001 general election, MacShane was appointed Parliamentary under-secretary of state for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on 11 June 2001, with responsibility for the Balkans and Latin America. He caused some embarrassment to the government in 2002 by describing President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela as a 'ranting, populist demagogue' and compared him to Benito Mussolini during a failed military coup attempt to depose the democratically elected president. Afterwards, he had to make clear that, as minister with responsibility for Latin America, the government deplored the coup attempt.
In November 2001, an article supportive of the war in Afghanistan was published in The Observer under the name of Muslim Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, headlined "The Five Myths Muslims Must Deny". A few days later however, it was revealed that the article had not in fact been written by Mahmood, but by MacShane; Mahmood had agreed to put his name to the article after Lord Ahmed of Rotherham had refused. Mahmood's actions were condemned by Inayat Bunglawala from the Muslim Council of Britain, who said that "[after] Lord Ahmed refused, MacShane then found Mahmood—universally regarded as being not exactly the brightest spark in parliament—to be a more willing instrument for his scheme".
In 2002, he became Minister for Europe in the reshuffle caused by the resignation of Estelle Morris. He was appointer a member of the Privy Council in 2005.
MacShane was a supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and strongly supported Tony Blair's foreign policy, including in relation to the Middle East. Later in 2003, he criticised Muslim community leaders, saying they did not do enough to condemn acts of Islamic terrorism.
During a meeting of Durham Labour Students in 2004, MacShane described Gordon Brown's five economic tests for joining the European single currency as, "a bit of a giant red herring." When contacted by The Scotsman newspaper about whether or not he made the comments, he responded: "Jesus Christ, no. I mean, 'red herring' is not one of my favourite metaphors. If you think any Labour MP saying the Prime Minister's most important policy is a red herring, then they would not survive long in the job." He had been recorded on a dictaphone, and the tape was played on both the Today programme and BBC News 24.
In March 2005, MacShane signed on to the Henry Jackson Society principles, advocating a proactive approach to the spread of liberal democracy across the world, including by military intervention. The society also supports "European military modernisation and integration under British leadership".
Following the 2005 general election, MacShane was dropped from the government. After returning to the backbenches in 2005, he was appointer as a delegate to the Council of Europe and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. MacShane wrote in Tribune magazine in 2006, "I have no idea why I was removed as a minister, and it does not worry me in the slightest."
While MacShane has campaigned on the issue of sex trafficking, he was accused of repeatedly using false statistics in order to inflate the number of female victims. In January 2007, he stated, "According to Home Office estimates, 25,000 sex slaves currently work in the massage parlours and brothels of Britain." He repeated the figure in a 2008 debate, attributing it to the Daily Mirror newspaper. It was later claimed that no such figure exists as an estimate.
On 17 December 2008, he initiated a debate about Britain's libel laws in Parliament. Specifically, he described how the United Kingdom has become a destination for libel tourists as well as how various jurisdictions in the United States (including the U.S. states of New York and Illinois and the federal government) were ready to pass measures designed to halt, at the minimum, reciprocal enforcement of civil judgments related to libel with the United Kingdom, and quite possibly, to allow countersuit, and the award of treble damages in the United States against any person bringing a libel action in a non-US court against US publications or websites.