Denis Healey
British politician (1917–2015)
Denis Winston Healey, Baron Healey (30 August 1917 – 3 October 2015) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979 and as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970; he remains the longest-serving Defence Secretary to date. He was a Member of Parliament from 1952 to 1992, and was Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1980 to 1983. To the public at large, Healey became well known for his bushy eyebrows, his avuncular manner and his creative turns of phrase.
Healey attended the University of Oxford and served as a Major in the Second World War. He was later an agent for the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret branch of the Foreign Office dedicated to spreading anti-communist propaganda during the early Cold War. Healey was first elected to Parliament in a by-election in 1952 for the seat of Leeds South East. He moved to the seat of Leeds East at the 1955 election, which he represented until his retirement at the 1992 election.
After Labour's victory at the 1964 election, he was appointed to the Cabinet by Prime Minister Harold Wilson as Defence Secretary; he held this role until Labour's defeat at the 1970 election, making him the longest-serving Secretary of State for Defence to date. When Labour returned to power after the 1974 election, Wilson appointed Healey Chancellor of the Exchequer. He stood for the leadership of the Labour Party in the election to replace Wilson in March 1976, but lost to James Callaghan; Callaghan retained Healey as Chancellor in his new government.
“Denis Healey” enters the record as british politician (1917–2015). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Denis, Healey and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Denis Healey” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Denis, Healey and British provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q332360. VIAF identifies the subject as 35256740. The Library of Congress control number is n80094523. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917, 2015, 1974 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Denis Healey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.