David Lea, Baron Lea of Crondall


David Edward Lea, Baron Lea of Crondall OBE is a British trade unionist and Labour politician.

Early life

Lord Lea was educated at Farnham Grammar School and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he studied economics.

Trade union career

He joined the TUC in 1964 as a research officer, became Head of the Economic Department, then Assistant General Secretary from 1978 until 1999, when he joined the House of Lords.
Whilst at the TUC, he was secretary of the TUC-Labour Party Liaison Committee from 1972 to 1994, a member of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth from 1974 until 1979, the Delors Committee on Economic and Social Concepts in the Community 1977 to 1979, the Kreisky Commission on Unemployment in Europe 1986–89, a member of the Working Party on Economic and Social Concepts in the EEC and a Vice President of the European TUC.

House of Lords

Appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1978 New Year Honours, Lea was made a Labour Life peer taking the title Baron Lea of Crondall, of Crondall in the County of Hampshire on 20 July 1999.
Lord Lea made headlines in April 2013 when he publicly claimed that fellow peer and former MI6 officer Daphne Park admitted to him shortly before her death that the British government had had a role in the 1961 assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.