Mitchell, Austin Vernon (1934– )

British Labour party politician. An articulate former television journalist, he was a leading member of Labour's Gaitskellite right-wing when he first became a member of Parliament in 1977. He did not reach cabinet office because Labour remained in opposition until 1997 and by then the party had moved substantially to the right, leaving him, with his support for interventionist government to promote equality, now to the left of the mainstream. He is widely credited with bringing television cameras to the Houses of Parliament.

Born in Baildon, Yorkshire, Mitchell was educated at Manchester and Oxford universities. His early career was as an academic, teaching between 1963 and 1971 at universities in New Zealand and at Oxford. He became a television journalist in the 1970s for BBC and Yorkshire Television, before being elected Labour MP for Grimsby in 1977. From the 1980s, he held posts as opposition spokesman and on parliamentary select committees.