Introduction
John Marek (born 24 December 1940), is a Welsh Conservative politician, former Member of Parliament and former Member of the National Assembly for Wales. He was leader of Forward Wales until joining the Conservatives in 2010.
He was Labour Member of Parliament for Wrexham from 1983 until 2001. He stood down after he was elected to represent Wrexham in the National Assembly for Wales in 1999. This was initially for the Labour Party, but he was deselected in 2003 and formed Forward Wales, for whom he was re-elected. He was defeated at the 2007 election.
Background
Born in London of Czech descent, Marek was the only Czech-speaking Member of the UK Parliament. He was educated at Chatham House Grammar School and at King's College London where he earned a BSc in Mathematics in 1962, and a PhD in Mathematics in 1965. He became a lecturer in applied mathematics at Aberystwyth University
Political career
He was elected a member of Ceredigion District Council, 1979-83, and was chair of its finance sub-committe in the year 1982-83.
Having previously unsuccessfully contested Ludlow in October 1974, he was elected as Labour Party Member of Parliament for the Wrexham Westminster constituency in 1983 and served as a party spokesman on Treasury matters, although he was not offered a government post in 1997.
As a supporter of devolution he chose to move to the National Assembly for Wales in 1999, and stood down from the UK Parliament in 2001. In the Assembly he became increasingly known as a maverick. In 2000 he was elected as Deputy Presiding Officer against the candidate preferred by the Labour leadership. This move, and his frequent criticisms of the Labour-led Wrexham County Borough led to his deselection as the Labour Party's candidate for the National Assembly elections of 1 May 2003.
He then stood as a candidate for the John Marek Independent Party and defeated the official Labour Party candidate, Lesley Griffiths, a former secretary of his, by 973 votes. Later that year he formed a new political party called 'Forward Wales' (Welsh: Cymru Ymlaen).
He ran for re-election in the 2007 Welsh Assembly election, but was defeated by Labour's Lesley Griffiths by 1,250 votes, thanks to a swing to the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and UKIP.
On 29 March 2010 Marek joined the Conservative Party, and he was later confirmed as the party's candidate for the 2011 Welsh Assembly election where he again came second to Griffiths, by 3,335 votes in the Wrexham constituency.
Wrexham AFC
In 2006 he was appointed a vice president of Wrexham A.F.C. by new owners Nev Dickens and Geoff Moss, and remained a vice president until the club passed into the ownership of the Wrexham Supporters Trust.