Who is Gordon Brown?

Early years

Gordon Brown was born in Glasgow in February 1951,
the second son of the Rev Dr John Brown and Elizabeth Brown.

His father was a Church of Scotland minister and his mother, after a distinguished period of military service, which included working with Britain’s military code-breakers gave up work to raise the family. Both Gordon's parents were a huge influence on his life and he had a very happy childhood first in Glasgow and then in Kirkcaldy, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth.

When the family arrived in Kirkcaldy, when Gordon was three, times were tough. He remembers people coming to the door asking for help when the linoleum factory closed down and throughout his childhood and teens there was a steady stream of local families coming to his father for help and support. It taught him early lessons about unemployment and poverty, but also what people can achieve when communities look out for one another and stick together when things are hard.

 

School days

Gordon followed his big brother John to the local state primary school when he was four. He displayed an early talent for maths but his big love was sport – particularly the local team Raith Rovers.  It was also at primary school that his life-long passion for international development was first in evidence. Gordon and his brother devised a range of ways to raise money for Oxfam’s ‘Freedom from Hunger’ campaign – including starting a sweet shop in the family garage and producing and selling a newspaper with Gordon as its football-obsessed Sports Editor.

Fife Council was conducting an experiment in academic fast-tracking at the time, and Gordon and some of his friends were selected to go to secondary school early. He entered Kirkcaldy High School at ten, and sat his Highers (the equivalent of A-levels) at just 15. Despite his academic abilities, Gordon remained primarily focussed on after-school activities; becoming junior tennis champion, a violin player in the school orchestra and a member of the first 15 school rugby team. Just before he left school, he played a rugby match against a team of former pupils and received an injury that was to change the whole course of his life.

 

Heading to Edinburgh

Gordon’s accelerated school career ended with his leaving for Edinburgh University at just 16, the youngest fresher there since 1945. In his first week of term he began to have problems with his eyes, and the doctors diagnosed him with a detached retina – the result of a blow to the head in that final rugby match at Kirkcaldy High. He was rushed to hospital and missed the entire first term of university as doctors battled to save his sight. He was to spend the next five years in and out of hospital, often lying still in a darkened room for weeks on end.

The experience left Gordon in more of a hurry than ever and contributed to his now legendary impatience. He was determined to get better and get on with making things better for other people, and it was during those long months of recuperation that he decided to abandon his early dreams of a career in professional sport to follow a life of public service. It also instilled in him a deep passion for protecting the NHS – the institution that had saved his sight without bankrupting his family.

 

Life on campus

Despite the problems with his health, Gordon threw himself into life on campus. He edited the Student magazine, and exposed the University’s investments in apartheid South Africa. His relentless campaigning led Edinburgh to disinvest – the first of many run-ins he was to have with University authorities and the establishment. He was later alerted to a loophole in the regulations, which allowed a student to run for Rector, a post traditionally held by one of the great and the good of Scottish society. To the University’s mounting fury, Gordon masterminded the election of the first student Rector and one year later he became the second after an energetic campaign supported by canvassers calling themselves ‘the Brown Sugars’.

Despite his interest in campaigning for change, he remained a focussed student and received a First Class Honours degree in History, followed by a PhD. His first job after graduating was as a lecturer for the Workers Educational Association.

 

Campaigning for Fife families

In the 1983 general election Gordon became a Labour MP at the age of 32.  Representing the area where he grew up, Gordon was able to take up many of the causes he had first known about as a schoolboy. His passionate campaigning on behalf of Fife’s families saw him quickly promoted to the shadow cabinet as Trade and Industry spokesperson and in 1992 he became Shadow Chancellor. He worked with John Smith, Neil Kinnock, Donald Dewar, Peter Mandelson and other leading figures in opposition, but his greatest and most enduring political alliance was with Tony Blair.

Gordon and Tony were allocated to share an office in 1983 when they both entered parliament and they quickly developed a shared analysis of how Labour would need to change to better serve the British people with a focus on strong defence, individual enterprise, and social responsibility. Together they modernised the Party so that in 1997, after 18 years in opposition, Labour secured both electoral success and the chance Britain for the better and forever.

 

Changing Britain as Chancellor

In 1997 Labour won a landslide victory and Gordon became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

During ten years at the Treasury, Gordon masterminded many of Labour’s proudest achievements including the winter fuel allowance, lifting half a million children out of poverty, introducing the Minimum Wage, the Child Trust Fund, the Child Tax Credit and paternity leave and creating Sure Start.

His childhood passion for global justice was reflected in his negotiation of debt cancellation for the world’s poorest nations and the tripling of the development budget to make this Labour Government the first in British history to be on track to keep the promise to spend 0.7% of national income on life-saving aid. 

 

Gordon Brown Prime Minister

The Brown family moved into 10 Downing Street on the 27th of June 2007 and Gordon quickly set about introducing changes like neighbourhood policing in every area, the world’s first ever Climate Change Act and a legally-enforceable right to early cancer screening and treatment
Gordon summed up his record in office in a speech to Labour Party conference in 2009. Since becoming Prime Minister, he has made major changes to how Britain tackles health, education, defence, crime, energy and foreign policy. His major speeches on each of these areas have been collected together in a collection, ‘The Change we Choose’ (The greatest challenge Gordon has faced in office is the worldwide financial crisis and the subsequent recession. Gordon is widely credited with preventing a second great depression through his negotiation of the global deal at the London Summit, a meeting of the G20, which he hosted in the middle of the financial crisis.

In 2009 he was named in the Time 100 and was profiled by author JK Rowling.

 

Family life and becoming a Dad

Gordon proposed to Sarah Macaulay on a beach in Fife on the first day of the new millennium. Seven months later they were married in a private ceremony at their home in North Queensferry On the 28th of December 2001 Sarah gave birth to a daughter, Jennifer, who was born two months premature. On the 7th of January, just ten days later, she passed away. Determined to help other babies and children, Gordon and Sarah set up PiggyBankKids (of which Sarah remains the President.

In 2003, Gordon and Sarah had a second child, John, followed by Fraser in 2006. The privacy of the boys has been fiercely guarded and Gordon and Sarah are determined that they can have an ordinary childhood at local schools.

 

The future

Gordon is committed to a British future that is fair for all. You can read about his pledges to Britain here and find out more about why we fight for Britain’s future here.