Lord Dubs is a Labour politician and leading refugee rights advocate. He was MP for Battersea 1979-1987, during which time he served for four years as a shadow Home Office Minister.

After leaving the Commons in 1987, he became the Director of the Refugee Council. He was appointed a Labour life peer in 1994.

After Labour’s election victory in 1997, he was appointed as a Minister in Northern Ireland where he served until the establishment of a new devolved administration following the Good Friday Agreement.

He sponsored an amendment to the Immigration Act 2016 (which later became known as the “Dubs Amendment”) to offer some unaccompanied refugee children stranded in camps in Europe safe passage to Britain. Alf himself had arrived in Britain in 1939 as a six-year-old refugee fleeing the Nazis in Czechoslovakia, on one of the Kindertransport trains.

He currently serves on the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly and on the Justice and Home Affairs select committee. He continues to campaign on human rights, specifically on behalf of refugees.

Anne and her brother are children of a refugee from Nazi Germany. Her mother and grandparents arrived here in the United Kingdom in February 1939 and went to live in Oxford. It was a hard life for an 11-year-old German girl at English school whose father, who was a psychiatrist, was interned on the Isle of Man. These experiences, recounted often, helped to form Anne’s politics.

As a head teacher in the 1990s, Anne welcomed many refugee children from Bangladesh, Somalia, Ethiopia and Vietnam to her Wandsworth school. The school was happily multi-lingual, multi-faith, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural. After teaching, she moved to a local authority and then to the voluntary sector, and spent eight years working for School Home Support.

Anne was a magistrate for over 20 years, including being the Chair of the Youth Panel. She works part-time for the NHS as an Expert by Experience and as a lay representative.

JP worked as a theatre director, writer and drama lecturer for two decades. He created numerous productions for children and young people, often with student actors from disadvantaged backgrounds. He adapted and directed the original stage productions of the Horrible Histories shows.

In the past ten years, he has been a communications consultant, working for charities challenging attitudes to race and inequality, and numerous senior politicians and public figures. He has advised and written speeches for senior Labour politicians including Baroness Scotland, Lord Leong, Richard Corbett (the last leader of Labour’s MEPs). He currently runs the political office of a government minister.

Jane’s varied experience includes time in the private sector, UK politics and the United Nations. She worked for the John Lewis Partnership for over 20 years in various management roles before entering Parliament in 2010 as MP for Battersea. As a government minister Jane led on legislation including the introduction of plain packaging of tobacco and the soft drinks industry levy (‘sugar tax’). 

Jane joined the World Health Organization in 2017 and worked for five years in the senior leadership team in Geneva, from 2019 as Executive Director, External Relations and Governance. She is currently a non-executive director of the Behavioural Insight Team and has previously served on the board of NHS England. She is a trustee of several other charities including Action on Smoking and Health, and the Yorkshire Cricket Foundation, the charitable arm of Yorkshire County Cricket Club of which she is a non-executive director.

Fiona was MP for Slough between 1997 and 2017. She still lives in the Battersea, the constituency where she lived throughout the time Alf was the local MP. She knew him in the 1980s when she was the director of the joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. 

She is proud to be a trustee of this charity which, by involving people of different political views contributes to positive discussion of issues which remain so important to creating a safe and civilised society.

Judy spent her working life as a trade union official. She was General Secretary of Napo, the trade union for family court and probation staff, before her retirement in 2008. She previously worked for the National Union of Civil and Public Servants, (now part of PCS – the Public and Commercial Services Union). Judy was active for many years in the Trade Union Congress, including being a member of the General Council and Chair of their Women’s Committee. 

Since her retirement from full time work, she has held appointments with bodies including the Government Equalities Office, the Central Arbitration Committee, the European Economic and Social Committee, the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, and the New Economics Foundation. She was awarded the CBE in 2009 for services to trade unions and equal opportunities.

A former civil servant with a career in defence, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. John moved to Battersea over 40 years ago when Alf Dubs was the MP. John has spent his retirement travelling, involving himself in his community as a trustee of the local civic society and encouraging his grandchildren to become Tottenham Hotspur fans.

John is interested in the politics of where he lives: Wandsworth is a Borough that has a diverse population, many immigrants who have made successful lives in the community, but areas of deprivation too. He is passionate about educating young people in Battersea about immigration and refugees, and encouraging an understanding of why people put themselves at significant risk to seek a better life in the UK.