Sir Thomas Dalyell Loch, 11th Baronet (; born 9 August 1932 ), known as Tam Dalyell, is a British Labour Party politician who was a Member of Parliament ( MP ) in the House of Commons from 1962 to 2005.

Dalyell stated in an interview with the American magazine Vanity Fair that Prime Minister Tony Blair was unduly influenced by a " cabal of Jewish advisers.

On 7 March 2003, Dalyell was elected Rector of the University of Edinburgh by the staff and students.

Dalyell, however, claimed that this was a legitimate expense to which he was entitled, and the House of Commons ' Fees Office, in fact, finally released £ 7, 800.

A civil servant ( government employee ) named Clive Ponting leaked two government documents concerning the sinking of the cruiser to a Member of Parliament ( Tam Dalyell ) and was subsequently charged with breaching section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911.

Until he retired at the 2005 General Election, Linlithgow was represented at Westminster by the former Father of the House of Commons, Tam Dalyell.

Undeterred by the Whips criticism, Marsden then spoke out against the press officer Jo Moore who had said, that 9 / 11 was " a very good day to get out anything we want to bury "; he and Tam Dalyell were the only two Labour MPs to vote against the Government .< ref >< i > Hansard Ministerial Conduct 23 / 10 / 01

The town was notably mentioned in a famous speech by MP Tam Dalyell in the House of Commons on 14 November 1977 in which he posed what would become known as the West Lothian question.

The Military Action Against Iraq ( Parliamentary Approval ) Bill was a private member's bill introduced into the United Kingdom House of Commons by Tam Dalyell MP under the Ten Minute Rule.

It was presented by Tam Dalyell and supported by Tony Benn, Harry Cohen, Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway, Neil Gerrard, Dr Ian Gibson, John McAllion, Alice Mahon, Robert Marshall-Andrews, Dennis Skinner and Audrey Wise.

The West Lothian question which was posed by the Scottish MP Tam Dalyell in the 1970s is wide open:

" Tam Dalyell, the former Labour MP for West Lothian, has long believed Megrahi was the victim of a catastrophic miscarriage of justice, and has publicly stated that Megrahi is merely a scapegoat.

Dalyell was supported by Nelson Mandela, the Church of Scotland, the Catholic Church, the law faculties of the Scottish universities, the representatives of British relatives and the UN's official observer at the notorious trial in The Hague.

The attack's commander, Captain James Dalyell, was one of those killed.

In 1970, British MP Tam Dalyell heard about what was happening to the Chagossians and gave notice that he intended to ask a number of questions in Parliament.

General Tam ( Thomas ) Dalyell ( Dalziell, Dalziel or Dalzell ) ( 1615 – 1685 ) was a Scottish Royalist General in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

Dalyell was born in Linlithgowshire ; the son of Thomas Dalyell of the House of the Binns, Linlithgowshire ; head of a cadet branch of the family of the Earls of Carnwath, and of Janet, daughter of the 1st Lord Bruce of Kinloss, Master of the Rolls in England.

In 1985, as private secretary to Michael Heseltine, the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, he was a witness for the prosecution in the trial of Clive Ponting, who was later acquitted of an offence under section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 for passing information to Labour MP Tam Dalyell about the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands war.

* Tam Dalyell to step down at 2005 election

While a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence ( MoD ), Clive Ponting sent two documents to Labour MP Tam Dalyell in July 1984 concerning the sinking of an Argentine navy warship General Belgrano, a key incident in the Falklands War of 1982.

Tam Dalyell, former Labour MP who played a crucial role in organising the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, described Lord Fraser's comments as an ' extraordinary development ': " I think there is an obligation for the chairman and members of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to ask Lord Fraser to see them and testify under oath-it's that serious.

Dalyell defeated them at the Battle of Rullion Green, in the Pentland Hills, south of Edinburgh.

During his Eton days, Ridley's fag had been Tam Dalyell, later Labour MP for West Lothian.

Labour MP Tam Dalyell opposed the creation of the Parliament, but in favour of giving such a Parliament the power to raise and lower taxes on the basis that, although he opposed the Parliament as proposed by his party, if it did exist it should have tax-varying powers.

He would, however, publish pieces on party policy written from viewpoints with which he did not personally agree a fact which Tam Dalyell said had impressed him.

Dalyell later said " I had contact with Les Coleman 10 years ago.

Together with Dr. Elsie Dalyell, she led a team from the Lister Institute and the Medical Research Institute in 1922 to study the relation of nutrition to bone disease.

This allows Members to raise questions or debate issues which could slander an individual, interfere with an ongoing court case or threaten to reveal state secrets, such as in the Zircon affair or several cases involving the Labour MP Tam Dalyell.

* 1666 – At least 3000 men of the Scottish Royal Army led by Tam Dalyell of the Binns defeat about 900 Covenanter rebels in the Battle of Rullion Green.

On 16 May 2009, the Daily Telegraph reported that Dalyell had claimed £ 18, 000 for three bookcases just months before his retirement from the House of Commons.

In 1930 the Mother of the present Tam Dalyell asked a local joiner to repair the legs on the table, to find out that the about-to-be-retired tradesman's first job had been to retrieve said table from the pond.

In a House of Commons written question on 13 December 1988, Tam Dalyell asked the Prime Minister " when she expects to receive the report from Sir Robin Butler on the case of Mr P J Haseldine and his letter to The Guardian ; and if she will make a statement?

The Daily Telegraph quoted the investigating officer as saying " I told you so ", but Tam Dalyell as saying it stretched the imagination to breaking point to suppose that the body, dumped on a Wednesday, could have lain undiscovered until the following Saturday despite a search of the copse on the Thursday by a farmer and his dog: " The two would have had no problem finding a dead rabbit, let alone the body of Hilda Murrell ".

In the 1990s, Dalyell asked the Lord Advocate, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, to grant diplomatic immunity to Lester Coleman, a coauthor of Trail of the Octopus, so that he could give evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial in Scotland ; the Federal Government of the United States had indictments against Coleman, accusing him of passport fraud and perjury.

Dalyell is vocal in his disapproval of imperialism.

" Dalyell denied accusations that the remarks were anti-Semitic.

In March 2003, regarding the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Dalyell accused the then Prime Minister Tony Blair of being a war criminal.

They have one son, Gordon Wheatley Dalyell, and one daughter, both of whom are lawyers.

He is a 6th cousin of Harry S. Truman through the daughter of the 1st Baronet Dalyell of the Binns.

* Dame Eleanor Dalyell, 10th Btss ( 1895 – 1972 ) ( cr. 1685 ), whose title passed to her son, the Labour politician Tam Dalyell.

* Tam Dalyell, former Father of the House of Commons.