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'Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon', GCMG, KBE, PC, (born 27 February1941), commonly known as 'Paddy Ashdown', is a British politician.
Ashdown was leader of the Liberal Democrats until August 1999; later he was the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 27 September 2002 to 30 May 2006. A gifted , Ashdown is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and other languages. He was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (GCMG) in the New Year Honours 2006.

Contents

Early life

Member of Parliament

SDP-Liberal Alliance and Leader of Liberal Democrats

Resigned and retirement

High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina

Witness for the prosecution at the trial of Slobodan Milošević

Offer of Cabinet post

Personal life

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links

Early life

Ashdown is the eldest of seven children and was born in New Delhi in British India to a lapsed Catholic father, and a Protestant mother; subsequently, he and his siblings were not raised Roman Catholic. His father was a Captain in the Indian Army, 14th Punjab Regiment & RIASC and his mother was a QA. He was largely brought up in Northern Ireland (hence the nickname "Paddy") and educated at Bedford School, England. From 1959 to 1972 he served as an officer in the Royal Marines, including a stint in the elite Special Boat Service.

Member of Parliament

After leaving the Marines, he worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in industry, and as a youth worker before being elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Yeovil in 1983. It has been suggested that Ashdown worked for MI6 while a diplomat in Geneva in the 1970s, but he has publicly denied this.

SDP-Liberal Alliance and Leader of Liberal Democrats

In the House of Commons he was SDP-Liberal Alliance spokesman on Trade and Industry and then on Education. After the merger that formed the Liberal Democrats, he was elected as the new party's leader in 1988.
Ashdown led the Liberal Democrats into two general elections, in 1992 and 1997. In the 1997 election, the Liberal Democrats won 46 seats, their best performance since the 1920s.
As leader he was a notable proponent of co-operation between the Liberal Democrats and "New Labour", and had regular secret meetings with Tony Blair to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. After Labour's 1997 victory a "Joint Cabinet Committee" (JCC) including senior Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians was created to discuss the implementation of the two parties' shared priorities for constitutional reform; its remit was later expanded to include other issues on which Blair and Ashdown saw scope for co-operation between the two parties. Ashdown's successor as Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, deliberately allowed the JCC to slip into abeyance until it effectively stopped meeting, although it is not clear if it was ever formally dissolved. Blair and Ashdown also agreed to create the Jenkins Commission to conduct a public inquiry into the case for electoral reform. Chaired by Liberal Democrat peer Roy Jenkins, the commission recommended replacing the first-past-the-post electoral system with a system of proportional representation for use in General Elections, in line with a key demand of Ashdown and his party. However, Blair remained unconvinced of the case for electoral reform, and the commission's recommendations have never been passed into law. The plan to bring Liberal Democrats into the government continued, according to Ashdown's published diaries, but foundered on opposition from senior Labour ministers.

Resigned and retirement

Ashdown resigned the leadership in 1999 and was succeeded by Charles Kennedy. He was knighted (KBE) in 2000 and became a life peer as 'Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon', of Norton Sub Hamdon in the County of Somerset in the House of Lords after retiring from the Commons in 2001. In the 2001 election, the Yeovil seat was retained for the Liberal Democrats by David Laws.

High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina

After leaving British politics, he took up the post of the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina on May 27, 2002, reflecting his long-time advocacy of international intervention in that region. He succeeded Wolfgang Petritsch in the position created under the Dayton Agreement. He is sometimes denigrated as "the Viceroy of Bosnia" by critics of his work as High Representative.

Witness for the prosecution at the trial of Slobodan Milošević

On 14 March, 2002 Ashdown testified as a witness for the prosecution at the trial of Slobodan Milošević at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.^[1] He said that he was on the Kosovo-Albania border near Junik in June, 1998.^[2] From this location, through his binoculars, Ashdown claimed to see Serbian forces shelling several villages.^[3]
On July, 2005 a defence witness, General Bozidar Delić, claimed to demonstrate with a topographical map of the area that Ashdown could not have been able to see the areas that he claimed to be able to see as hills, mountains and thick woods obstructed his view.^[4]
After the Delic claims, Ashdown supplied the Tribunal with grid coordinates and a cross section of the ground indicating that he could indeed see the locations concerned.^[5] These coordinates indicated he was actually on the Kosovo/ Albania border, which was a sealed border at the time.^[6] The prosecution also used some new maps indicating Ashdown's location, but their accuracy was challenged by Delić, as the location of a village was different to other maps of the area.^[7]

Offer of Cabinet post

In June 2007, the BBC reported that Ashdown had been offered, and rejected, the Cabinet post of Northern Ireland Secretary by incoming Labour Party Prime Minister Gordon Brown ^[8]. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell had already ruled out the idea that members of his party would take seats in a Brown cabinet, but, according to the reports, Brown still proceeded to approach Ashdown with the offer.

Personal life

Ashdown married Jane Courtenay in 1962. The couple have two children, Simon and Katharine, along with three grandchildren. In 1992 following the press becoming aware of a stolen document relating to a divorce case he disclosed a five-month affair with his secretary, Patricia Howard, five years earlier. He and his marriage weathered the political and tabloid storm, with his wife of 30 years forgiving him, but headlines in the press were merciless–''The Sun'' famously dubbed him "Paddy Pantsdown".^[9][10]

Footnotes

1. Milošević trial transcript Thursday, 14 March 2002 Page 2331 Line 24
2. Milošević trial transcript Thursday, 14 March 2002 Page 2343 Line 21
3. Milošević trial transcript Thursday, 14 March 2002 Page 2343 Line 25
4. Milošević trial transcript Thursday, 7 July 2005 Page 42036 Line 7 & Tuesday, 12 July 2005 Page 42205 Line 1
5. Milošević trial transcript Wednesday, 28 September 2005 Page 44684 Line 1
6. Milošević trial transcript Wednesday, 28 September 2005 Page 44721 Line 1
7. Milošević trial transcript Wednesday, 28 September 2005 Pages 44721 to 44728
8. "Brown offered Ashdown Cabinet job", BBC News, Thursday 21 June 2007
9. "End of the Ashdown era", Lucy Ward, ''The Guardian'', January 21, 1999
10. "Sir Paddy Ashdown", Andrew Roth, ''The Guardian'', March 19, 2001

Bibliography

★ ''The Ashdown Diaries vol 1. 1988–1997'', ISBN 0-14-029775-8

★ ''The Ashdown Diaries vol 2. 1997–1999'', ISBN 0-14-029776-6

External links

★ Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon profile at the site of Liberal Democrats

★ Office of the High Representative in BiH

★ ''Farewell, Sarajevo'', ''The Guardian'', November 2, 2005

★ Catalogue of the papers of Paddy Ashdown at London School of Economics Archives

★ "After Iraq - Shall we ever intervene again?", lecture by Paddy Ashdown, given at Gresham College, 15 May 2007 (available for download as video or audio files)