Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Alan Howarth (born June 11, 1944) is a British politician, and member of Parliament for Newport East. In 1995 he defected from the Conservative Party to the Labour Party, the first MP to defect from the Tories since Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler. At the time he was MP for Stratford but was given the seat of Newport in reward. Another reward was being made Minister of Arts at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and membership of the Privy Council. He was sacked after the 2001 general election. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.