Bruce Douglas-Mann

Bruce Leslie Home Douglas-Mann (23 June 1927 – 27 July 2000) was a British politician.

Early life Bruce Douglas-Mann was born at Bexhill, Sussex, the son of a solicitor, Leslie John Douglas-Mann, MC.

Douglas-Mann was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and following national service in the navy, read PPE at Jesus College, Oxford, from 1948 to 1951. In 1954, he qualified as a solicitor and served as a councillor on Kensington Borough Council 1962-65 and on the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea from 1964. As a solicitor he specialised in trade union law and claims over industrial accidents and injuries. He also worked on obscenity cases and briefed barrister John Mortimer on the film Last Tango in Paris.

Parliamentary career Douglas-Mann contested St Albans in 1964 and Maldon in 1966 as a Labour candidate. He was elected Member of Parliament for Kensington North in 1970, then for Mitcham and Morden in February 1974.

Douglas-Mann spoke out on the plight of refugees. In 1971, in the East Bengal (now Bangladesh) refugee crisis (during the Bangladesh Liberation War) he said it was "the worst tragedy the world had known" and the following year, when Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of Asians from Uganda he said that returning them would be "like sending Jews back to Hitler in the 1930s". He lost to the Conservative candidate Angela Rumbold and was pushed into third place when he stood again at the 1983 general election. He tried one final time in 1987, but remained in third and last place with only 16.6 per cent.