Lord (David) Alton of Liverpool is a British statesman, professor, and human rights advocate. He is currently Visiting Professor at Liverpool Hope University and a Member of the House of Lords Select Committee on International Relations and Defence.
served for eighteen years as a Member of the House of Commons and joined the House of Lords in 1997 after earning a life peerage.
As a young man working as a special-needs teacher during the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War he cultivated an interest in a political career whose central concern was protection of the vulnerable. In 1972 David Alton became the youngest elected City Councilor in Britain and in 1979 became Britain’s youngest MP. As Chief Whip and Chairman of his party’s Policy Committee, he oversaw the Troubles in Northern Ireland and since then has asserted himself as one of the world’s preeminent defenders of victims of systemic violence. He has traveled extensively, sometimes at great risk, and authored reports on human rights abuses in Africa, Brazil, and North Korea. As founder and co-chairman of the British-DPRK All-Party Parliamentary Group, Alton has held talks with high-level North Korean officials and in 2016 was appointed by the South Korean government a Sage of the International Advisory Group on North Korean Human Rights.
He is in addition Secretary of the All Party Group on Sudan and South Sudan, for which he presented a report to the UN on the Darfur genocide in 2004, and is Vice Chairman of similar groups for Egypt, Tibet, Uganda, and Burma. Alton co-founded the Jubilee Campaign, a Christian charity that helps children subject to human trafficking and other injustices across the world. Supplementary to his inimitable career of political action has been a belief in the expansion of free speech and religious tolerance, which he has in part explored and promoted as a professor and author. From 1997 to 2016 he was Professor of Citizenship at Liverpool John Moores University, where he established the Roscoe Foundation for Citizenship and the respected Roscoe Lectures.
Alton is also an honorary professor at Yanbian University in China and in 2017 was appointed Visiting Professor at Liverpool Hope University. Alton’s prodigious energy and experience has been the source of eleven books on topics largely connected to ethics and responsible citizenship. He was appointed Knight Commander of Merit of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George in 2003 and Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great in 2008. He remains a powerful advocate against the worst injustices of our time.
