Mark Seddon

Mark Seddon (born 1962) is a British journalist, and former editor of the Labour Party associated Tribune.

Education and early life

The son of a British army officer, Seddon was sent to Dauntsey's School, an independent co-educational boarding school in the village of West Lavington in Wiltshire. He studied Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, where in 1984 he was elected president of the Union of UEA Students.

Political career

Seddon became editor of Tribune in 1993, a job he kept until 2004. He was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party as a Grassroots Alliance candidate in 1997, gaining the highest share of the vote and remained an NEC member until 2005.

Seddon tried to find a parliamentary seat and stood in the safe Conservative seat of Buckingham in the 2001 General Election against John Bercow. In 2002, he was controversially removed from the shortlist to be Labour's candidate in the Ogmore by-election, a process that was repeated in 2010 when he sought selection for the Labour seat of Stoke-on-Trent Central. During the 1992 General Election, he worked for Gordon Brown and served for five years on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Economic Policy Commission.

Seddon was a vocal critic of the last Labour government in the UK, particularly over the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. He backed Mayor of London Ken Livingstone's ultimately successful attempts to be readmitted to the Labour Party. He has written a book, Standing for Something about his time as a dissenter within New Labour.

Since the beginning of 2011 Seddon has been director of People's Pledge, a political campaign that seeks a referendum in the United Kingdom on the European Union.

Journalistic career

Seddon currently writes for amongst others, The Guardian, The Independent, Daily Mail, The Spectator, New Statesman, Private Eye, The Oldie, Tribune, Country Life, 'Big Think' (New York) and The National (Abu Dhabi). He was formerly the New York-based United Nations correspondent for Al Jazeera English, having helped set up and run the first ever Aljazeera English TV New York Bureau.

He has reported for the BBC from inside Iraq, North Korea and China, as well as for Sky TV from Yemen and for Al Jazeera English from North Korea, Syria, Dr Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia and Haiti. Seddon also reported regularly from the United Nations and from the White House, and has lectured widely in North America and the UK. He has been a Diarist for the London Evening Standard and has been a frequent contributor to The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, New Statesman and Private Eye. He was an early guest on Have I Got News For You, and has appeared as a commentator on numerous UK and US television and radio programmes, including Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Breakfast with Frost, The Politics Show and the Today programme.

After leaving the Labour Party National Executive Committee in 2005, he became the United Nations and New York correspondent for Al Jazeera English, before returning to the UK to continue as Aljazeera English TV's Diplomatic Correspondent.

He lives in Buckinghamshire, and is a keen naturalist and gardener.

External links

• Mark Seddon's blog, Comment is free, Guardian Unlimited
• As I Please - Dispatches from the corridors of British power, Mark Seddon, Big Think
• Mark Seddon interview, Logos, Spring 2004

Books

• Mark Seddon and Martin Rowson (26 September 2011). Standing for Something. Biteback Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84954-123-7. http://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/Standing%20for%20Something/. 

Media offices
Preceded by Paul Anderson	Editor of Tribune 1993–2004	Succeeded by Chris McLaughlin