John Howarth (politician)  John Howarth (born 31 October 1958) is a British Labour Party politician who served as a member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 2017 to 2020. Howarth succeeded Anneliese Dodds who had represented the seat since the 2014 European Parliament election until she was elected as MP for Oxford East in the 2017 General Election, and he was re-elected at the 2019 European Parliament election. He was educated in Gateshead at Highfield Comprehensive School and at the University of Essex where he read Economics. He started his career as a Labour Party official, then working and running businesses in Information Technology, Design, Business Communications and Public Affairs. He spent 11 years as a Councillor serving on Berkshire County Council, Reading Borough Council and the South East England Regional Assembly. His father, also John Howarth, worked in the coal industry first as a footplateman and later as a traffic foreman on the Bowes railway. His mother Freda Howarth (Robinson) was the daughter of Joe Robinson, a pit deputy at Heworth Colliery. Joe had served in the Northumberland Fusileers Regiment in the First World War and was wounded at Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres). During the Second World Ward Freda was an industrial conscript working as a welder in munitions production. John Howarth cites his Grandfather as particularly influential on his early political thinking. Howarth grew up on the Ellen Wilkinson Estate, a 1950s council housing development now part of Gateshead Borough. He attended Wardley Infant and Junior Schools and Highfield Comprehensive, a purpose-built comprehensive school that opened in 1970 upon the abolition of selection at 11 plus. The school would later be renamed Thomas Hepburn Community School and closed in 2019. He studied Economics at the University of Essex and after graduating gained a master's degree in the History and Theory of 20th Century Art. His MA thesis was on work of the German Director, Werner Herzog. John Howarth became involved with the Labour Party during the February 1974 General Election when his father was on strike. He continued to be involved with Labour election campaigns in October 1974 and the Newcastle Central By-election of 1976 before university. In student politics he became National Secretary of Labour Students. On leaving the student world in 1982 Howarth became a Labour Party constituency organiser in Basingstoke and Secretary of the Hampshire County Labour Party. Having progressed to Labour's Southern Regional Office (covering what is now the South East Region) Howarth left Labour's staff in 1988 to work in the private sector and settled in Reading.