Michael John Martin, Baron Martin of Springburn, (3 July 1945 – 29 April 2018) was a Scottish politician who served as Speaker of the House of Commons between 2000 and 2009. A member of the Labour Party prior to becoming speaker, he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow Springburn from 1979 to 2005 and for Glasgow North East until 2009. He was elected as Speaker of the House of Commons in 2000, remaining in the office for nine years until his involuntary resignation in 2009.
On his election to the post of Speaker in 2000, he was the first Catholic to serve in the role since the Reformation. He resigned from the position on 21 June 2009, as a result of diminishing parliamentary and public confidence owing to his role in the expenses scandal. He stood down from the House of Commons on the following day.
Martin was born on 3 July 1945 in William Street in Glasgow, the son of a merchant seaman and a school cleaner. He was one of five children, and was brought up in a tenement community in Anderston. The family later moved to Springburn when Michael was fourteen years old. He attended St Patrick's Boys' School, leaving a few days before his fifteenth birthday to become an apprentice sheet metal worker at a factory called Heatovent. He worked at a railway yard in Springburn for the train engine makers North British Caledonian Railways and became involved in the National Union of Sheet Metal Workers and Coppersmiths. He joined the Labour Party when aged 21. He worked as a sheet-metal worker with Rolls-Royce from 1960 to 1976, and worked at the plant at Hillington. By his mid-twenties, he was a full-time shop steward with the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers.
At the age of 27, in 1973, Martin was elected as a Labour councillor of the Glasgow Corporation, representing the Fairfield ward in the Govan area. In 1974, he was elected to the City of Glasgow District Council, representing the Balornock ward. He was a trade union organiser with the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) between 1976 and 1979.
In 1978, Martin was selected by the Labour Party out of five prospective candidates to replace Richard Buchanan. He was elected as the Member of Parliament for Glasgow Springburn at the 1979 general election. He was a supporter of Roy Hattersley and Denis Healey, who were ideologically on the right wing of the party and with whom he served as a parliamentary private secretary from 1980 to 1983. He was re-elected in 1983, 1987, 1992 and 1997. Associated with the right wing of the Labour Party, he was socially conservative on issues such as abortion and homosexuality. In 1994, he was one of thirteen Labour MPs who voted against the reduction of the age of consent for homosexuals from 21 to 18.
He served as Chairman of the Scottish Grand Committee from 1987 to 1997. He sat on the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen 1987–2000. He was appointed as First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (one of three Deputy Speakers) in May 1997.
In 2000, Betty Boothroyd retired as Speaker. An election was held in October of that year and twelve MPs put their names forward as potential successors. Many observers had considered the Conservative MP George Young to be the favourite as he had support from both the Conservative and Labour leadership, who viewed it as the Conservatives' 'turn' to have a Speaker elected from their benches. However, many backbench MPs, particularly those from the Labour Party (who held a large majority in the House at the time), viewed Young as being not sufficiently in touch with ordinary MPs because he had very recently been a member of his party's front bench team. (Young had stepped down from the Shadow Cabinet just before the election for a new Speaker and had been a member of the Cabinet in the Conservative government during the previous parliament.) In the end, the contest was determined by a series of votes that were held during a process that lasted more than six hours on 23 October 2000. Martin's rivals were eliminated one by one and Young's candidacy was rejected by the House.
Martin was elected as the 156th Speaker on 23 October 2000, becoming the first Catholic to serve in the role since the Reformation. In accordance with a long-standing convention, Martin resigned from the Labour Party. He eschewed some of the traditional clothing associated with the Speaker's role, appearing without wig, silk stockings and knee breeches. His Glaswegian accent led to his being nicknamed "Gorbals Mick" by Quentin Letts, after the working-class district of Glasgow, although he was actually born on the other side of the river from the Gorbals and represented a constituency a few miles away.
Martin's initial appointment as Speaker occurred against a recent pattern in the House where the post of Speaker had alternated between the two main political parties (the Conservative Party and the Labour Party). As his predecessor, Betty Boothroyd, had been a Labour MP, the new Speaker had been expected to emerge from the Conservative benches.
Martin was re-elected as an MP in the 2001 general election, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats not challenging him but the Scottish National Party (SNP) achieving a small swing towards its candidate. After being returned in the general election, he did not face a contest for the chair—no previous speakers that were returned to the Commons after a general election have. He was re-elected as Speaker, with Young nominating him.
Although the House of Commons has long held a yearly hannukiah lighting ceremony at the official residence of the Speaker, it never had its own hannukiah and had to borrow one from the local Jewish community every year; despite being a Catholic, Martin arranged in 2003 for the House to have its own hannukiah, which is still used every year. Coincidentally, his successor John Bercow would become the first Jewish Speaker of the House six years later.
In the 2005 general election, he stood in the new constituency of Glasgow North East, with the SNP again fielding a candidate against him. He was returned to Parliament. He was unopposed in the election to be Speaker. Shortly after the 2005 election, when the Liberal Democrat MP Patsy Calton entered the Commons for the last time to affirm her allegiance from a wheelchair and sign the register, Martin broke with tradition and left the Speaker's Chair to shake her hand and kiss her on the cheek, saying "Welcome home Patsy." Calton, who had just been re-elected, had terminal breast cancer and died three days later.
On 17 February 2006, Martin had angioplasty at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary for blocked coronary arteries. His office confirmed this on 26 February and indicated that he would be absent from his duties for several weeks. He returned to the chair on 18 April.
On 1 November 2006, during Prime Minister's Questions, Martin caused uproar in the House of Commons by ruling out of order a question from Opposition Leader David Cameron in which he challenged Prime Minister Tony Blair over the future leadership of the Labour Party. Martin stated that the purpose of Prime Minister's Questions was for the House to question the Prime Minister on the actions of the government. This caused such dissent amongst MPs that Martin threatened to suspend the session. Cameron re-worded the question to ask about Blair's future as prime minister rather than leader of the Labour Party, which Martin allowed. Conservative MPs threatened to walk out if a similar event occurred in the future.
In 2007, Martin used public money to employ lawyers in challenging negative press stories; media law firm Carter-Ruck was engaged for three months at a cost of more than £20,000. The Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker criticised the use of taxpayers' money as a "very expensive" way to issue press releases; the TaxPayers' Alliance also expressed disapproval. Martin was also criticised at the same time for trying to block the publication of details of MPs' £5 million-a-year travel expenses under the Freedom of Information Act.