David Blunkett

David Blunkett, Baron Blunkett, PC is best known as a British politician and more recently as an academic, having represented the Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough constituency foryears through toMay 2015 when he stepped down at the general election. Blind since birth, and coming from a poor family in one of Sheffields most deprived districts, he rose to become Education and Employment Secretary, Home Secretary and Work and Pensions Secretary in Tony Blairs Cabinet following Labours victory in the 1997 general election.

Blunkett was born onJune 1947 at Jessop Hospital, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, with improperly developed optic nerves due to a rare genetic disorder. He grew up in an underprivileged family and in 1959, he endured a family tragedy when his father was gravely injured in an industrial accident in which he fell into a vat of boiling water while at work as a foreman for the East Midlands Gas Board, dying a month later. This left the surviving family in poverty, especially since the board refused to pay compensation for two years because his father worked past the retirement age, dying at age 67.

Source: Wikipedia