Arthur Lyons

## The Right Honourable

Arthur Lyons

MP

Official portrait of Arthur Lyons

Assumed Office

09/03/2019

Leader Pamela Hughes

Assumed Office

09/03/2019

Leader Pamela Hughes

Incumbent

Assumed Office

09/03/2019

Majority 20,658 (52.5%)

Arthur Lyons (born 9 May 1943) is a British politician serving as the Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Shadow Lord President of the Council and Member of Parliament for Glasgow Central from 09/03/2019.

Lyons studied Common Law at the University of Glasgow and Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh during his first years in academia, then he received his Master of Laws degree from the University of Glasgow in International Law and Security. He served as a diplomatic adviser to the Government of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and to the Commonwealth Secretary-General. He lectured in Law at Glasgow University after having been awarded a Doctor of Laws from the selfsame. Lyons reached the post of Professor of Common Law, and chaired the Faculty Board of International Law.

### **Early Life and Education**

Arthur Lyons was born to Nicolas James Lyons, an international lawyer who was a United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and worked as a consultant for NATO, and Sallie Thornberry, a teacher. When Lyons was seven, his parents divorced and he had to leave their home with his mother and two sisters. After this, he relied on free school meals and food parcels, and their cats were euthanised to save money. Her mother later became a Labour councillor and mayor.

She was educated at the University of Glasgow, in which he attended the innovative Common Law degree that rendered him qualified to practice Law in England and Wales, instead of Scotland. After a tragic incident which resulted in his mother's handicap, Arthur made it the goal of his life to pursue a legal career in Scotland so he could exact retribution from the people responsible for his mother's encumbrance. Thereby he halted his Master of Laws degree in the University of Glasgow so he could obtain a qualifying Scots Law degree, which he did from the University of Edinburgh. During his study in the University of Edinburgh he became Chair of the Law Society and President of the Student Union, fact which fostered a Leftist sentiment in his mind.

At the end of his Master studies in the University of Glasgow, Lyons was appointed as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow (ODI Nuffield Fellow) working in Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia. During his fellowship he came across the harshest of living conditions, something which became a motive of his to go back to University and pursue his doctoral degree which he obtained by the University of Glasgow, in which he was later employed.

Lyons did not practice in Law until the very late 1980s, in which, in conjunction with his post in Glasgow University, he retained a personal firm that mostly dealt with cases arising from duties vested in him as the adviser of the Special Envoy on Literacy for International Development in UNESCO.

### Diplomatic Career

Lyons was appointed as the United Nation's special envoy for Kosovo and Darfur, and assisted HRH Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands on request of the UNESCO Secretary General as an assistant special envoy on Literacy for Development. Lyons did not decide to pursue a consular career as his post in the University of Glasgow was beyond demanding.