John Alan Redwood, Baron Redwood (born 15 June 1951) is a British politician and academic who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wokingham in Berkshire from 1987 to 2024. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Secretary of State for Wales in the Major government and was twice an unsuccessful candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party in the 1990s. Redwood subsequently served in the Shadow Cabinets of William Hague and Michael Howard; he remained a backbencher from then on. Redwood was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours List. On 24 May 2024, Redwood announced that he would stand down as MP for Wokingham and not seek re-election in the 2024 general election.
Prior to becoming an MP, Redwood completed a doctorate at All Souls College, Oxford and served as Director of the Number 10 Policy Unit under Margaret Thatcher. He is a veteran Eurosceptic who was described in 1993 as a "pragmatic Thatcherite". He was the co-chairman of the Conservative Party's Policy Review Group on Economic Competitiveness until 2010. He has the role of Chief Global Strategist of investment management company Charles Stanley & Co Ltd (part of Charles Stanley Group). Redwood supported Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum, and was a member of the British Eurosceptic pressure group Leave Means Leave.
John Redwood was born in Dover, the second child of William Redwood (1925–2016), an accountant and company secretary, and his wife, Amy Emma (née Champion), the manager of a shoe shop. He had an elder sister, Jennifer, who died as a baby in 1949. His childhood began in a council house, and he describes his family buying their own house as a "big breakthrough" for the family.
Redwood was educated at private Kent College in Canterbury, and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated with a BA in modern history in 1971. He was a postgraduate at St Antony's College, Oxford, from 1971 to 1972 and was elected an Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, from 1972 to 1979, which later led to a distinguished fellowship in 2007. At All Souls, he wrote a DPhil thesis which investigated the fear of atheism in England, from the Restoration to the publication of Alciphron by George Berkeley. He graduated with a DPhil in 1975.
Redwood was an Oxfordshire county councillor, representing the Conservative Party between 1973 and 1977, the youngest ever at the age of 21 when elected. In 1981, he unsuccessfully stood for the Greater London Council seat of Peckham. From 1983 onwards, he headed Margaret Thatcher's policy unit, where he was one of the champions of privatisation.
Redwood stood as the Conservative candidate at the Peckham by-election of October 1982, coming third with 12.42% of the vote behind the Labour Party candidate Harriet Harman and the SDP candidate Dick Taverne.
At the 1987 general election, Redwood was elected to the House of Commons as the MP for Wokingham, winning with 61.4% of the vote and a majority of 20,387.
He was made a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in July 1989 for corporate affairs at the Department of Trade and Industry. In November 1990, he was promoted to Minister of State. Redwood became Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities following the 1992 general election, where he oversaw the abolition of the Community Charge, known colloquially as the "poll tax", and its replacement with the Council Tax.
Redwood was re-elected as the MP for Wokingham at the 1992 general election with the same vote share of 61.4% and an increased majority of 25,709.
Redwood was opposed to attempts to reduce the age of consent for homosexuality in both 1994 and 1999, choosing to vote to keep Section 28 in November 2003. He has generally been opposed to same-sex marriage. He voted for the reintroduction of capital punishment in 1988, 1990 and 1994 and voiced support for the reintroducing of the death penalty when he launched his leadership bid on 26 June 1995. Redwood has stated since then: "I have never spoken or written against civil partnerships and gay marriage and am not proposing any change to current laws. I regard the debate about capital punishment as being over and do not support its reintroduction."
At the 1997 general election, Redwood was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 50.1% and a decreased majority of 9,365. After the election, Redwood was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry by William Hague. He was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions in June 1999, but was dropped in a mini reshuffle in February 2000, being succeeded by Archie Norman.
Redwood was again re-elected at the 2001 general election with a decreased vote share of 46.1% and a decreased majority of 5,994. Under Michael Howard, he was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Deregulation.
At the 2005 general election, Redwood was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 48.1% and an increased majority of 7,240. Redwood was interviewed about the rise of Thatcherism for the BBC television documentary series of 2006, Tory! Tory! Tory!, and has often appeared on television, including appearances on the BBC's Question Time.
Redwood was again re-elected at the 2010 general election with an increased vote share of 52.7% and an increased majority of 13,492. In 2011, he abstained on the military intervention in Libya. Redwood supports the establishment of a devolved English parliament. Following the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, Redwood called for radical reform involving the establishment of an English Parliament. His politicking prior to and succeeding the referendum placed him "front and centre" to any political gain due to the perceived power vacuum resulting from any possible changes to the status quo of the union.
At the 2015 general election, Redwood was again re-elected with an increased vote share of 57.7% and an increased majority of 24,197. He was again re-elected at the snap 2017 general election, with a decreased vote share of 56.6% and a decreased majority of 18,798. He was again re-elected at the 2019 general election with a decreased vote share of 49.6% and a decreased majority of 7,383. In 2021, Redwood publicly argued with Greta Thunberg over the UK's climate emissions on Twitter.
On 24 May 2024, two days after announcement of the date of the 2024 general election, and just 40 days before the actual date, John Redwood announced he would not be standing again for his Wokingham constituency, saying that he had ‘other things I wish to do’.
In the government reshuffle of May 1993, Redwood was appointed to the cabinet as Secretary of State for Wales. He deferred some road-widening schemes in Wales because of suggested harm to the environment.
Redwood committed a gaffe in 1993, when he attempted to mime to the Welsh national anthem at the Welsh Conservative Party conference, when he did not know the words. Redwood subsequently learned the anthem but, in August 2007, an unconnected news story on Redwood was illustrated with the same clip. This resulted in Conservative activists filing complaints, and as a result the BBC apologised to Redwood for airing the dated footage.