Larry Sanders (politician)


Lawrence Sanders is an American-born British academic, social worker, politician, and Health Spokesperson of the Green Party of England and Wales. He is the older brother of Bernie Sanders, United States Senator and twice U.S. presidential candidate.

Early life, education, and family

Larry Sanders was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Dorothy and Eli Sanders. Sanders' father was a Jewish immigrant whose family was killed in the Holocaust, while his mother was born in New York City on 2 October 1912 to Jewish immigrant parents from Radzyń Podlaski, in eastern Poland and Russia. His father, Eli, was born in Słopnice, Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire, on 19 September 1904. He emigrated from his birthplace to America in 1921 at age 17. He supported his family by selling paint. Sanders said that when he was a child, his family never lacked food or clothing, but major purchases "like curtains or a rug" were difficult to afford. Sanders' mother died in June 1959 at the age of 46. Sanders' father later died on 4 August 1962, at the age of 57. Both he and his younger brother attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn. Sanders described both of them as young postwar Jewish radicals but said they were part of the crowd, not yet leaders.
Sanders attended Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and obtained a masters degree in social work from the University of Oxford. He also attended Harvard Law School in the 1950s, leaving after two years to care for his sick mother. He returned after 35 years and attained his law degree there in 1994.
Sanders immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1968 or 1969. He became a university lecturer first at the University of West London and later at Oxford in the Department of Social Administration.
His son, Jacob Edward "Jake" Sanders, was elected to Oxford City Council in 2000 and was a Green Party parliamentary candidate in the Oxford East constituency at the 2005 general election.

Political career

Sanders was active in the Labour Party in Oxford in the 1980s. He left the Labour Party in 2001 because he felt that it had moved too far to the right under the leadership of Tony Blair, and defected to the Green Party as a result.
First elected in 2005, Sanders was a Green Party county councillor representing the East Oxford division in the Oxfordshire County Council, until he retired from the Council in 2013. His main focuses in county politics were social and health care services. He resigned from the board of the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust in October 2005 in a principled stand amid concerns that proposed cuts to services would leave vulnerable patients at greater risk.
He became Chairman of the Oxford Community School's Board of Governors in September 2009, following the resignation of the previous chairman, Chris Ballinger, and six other board members. In December of the same year, the Department for Children, Schools and Families approved an application by Oxfordshire County Council to disband the Board of Governors and replace them with an interim executive board. On hearing the decision, Sanders stated that he was "dreadfully disappointed".
Sanders ran as a Green Party candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon at the 2015 UK general election and finished in fifth place, receiving 2,497 votes, or 4.4% of the overall vote.
In February 2016, he was appointed Health Spokesperson of the Green Party of England and Wales.
Sanders was elected as a pledged delegate for Bernie Sanders to the 2016 Democratic National Convention at the Democrats Abroad Global Convention in Berlin in May 2016. He tearfully spoke at the convention on 26 July of his intention to cast his vote for his brother.
Sanders was selected as the Green Party candidate for the Witney by-election following former Prime Minister David Cameron's resignation as an MP in September 2016. He finished in fourth place with 1,363 votes. Sanders was selected to contest the Oxford East constituency at the 2017 snap general election. He finished in fourth place with 1,785 votes and a 3.3% share of the vote. He was the 7th-placed candidate for the Greens in the South East England constituency in the 2019 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom.