Reg Keys

Reginald Thomas Keys (born 1952), is the father of a British serviceman killed in the Iraq War. He stood in the 2005 General Election as an anti-war independent candidate for MP of Sedgefield, a constituency held by the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Keys is a founder member of the campaign group Military Families Against the War. His son Lance Corporal Tom Keys, was a Royal Military Policeman and one of six Red Caps killed by an Iraqi mob in Majar al-Kabir in June 2003.

Reg Keys was an ambulance paramedic for 19 years in Solihull before retiring to Llanuwchllyn, Bala in North Wales. In the 2005 UK general election, he stood against the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in the Sedgefield constituency. Keys declared at the outset of the campaign that he had been a Labour Party voter and was still basically socialist, but that he was seeking election as a candidate opposed to Blair's policy on the Iraq War. He claimed that by electing him, voters could keep the Labour Party in power but with Gordon Brown as the likely Prime Minister rather than Blair. Former Independent MP Martin Bell urged the other parties to withdraw their candidates as removing a supporter of the war from office would send a message to President Bush and other World Leaders who had supported him. During the campaign, UK newspaper The Guardian's Stuart Jeffries asked Keys, "Is it difficult to be a political candidate in these circumstances, when you are still clearly grieving?", to which he replied "Yes it is. […] I feel, though, that I have a responsibility to Tom. I keep going back to the words of a widow of a man who died on the Kursk […]. She said: 'If you betray your country you are a traitor and you will go to prison. But if your country betrays you, what can you do?' I think I have an answer to that: we can use our vote to get rid of those people who betrayed my son and other men like him. That's what I want the people of Sedgefield to do."

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