Alex Wood

Alex Wood (born Dundee, 1950)is a former Labour leader of Edinburgh City Council in Scotland.

He was a member of the Labour Party from 1969 until 1987. In the early 1970s Wood was a leading figure in the entryist Revolutionary Socialist League (aka Militant Tendency) in Scotland who left that party after it decided to support the creation of a devolved Scottish Assembly.

He subsequently became a leading figure in the Labour Co-ordinating Committee in Scotland and in May 1984 became leader of the first ever majority Labour administration in the city.

Members of the Labour group of councillors felt however that his politics were further left than theirs and in May 1986 voted they had no confidence in his leadership. He was replaced as council leader with Mark Lazarowicz.

Subsequently Wood left Labour and joined the Scottish Socialist Party (1987 version, not the present SSP).

Wood joined the Scottish National Party, of which he remains a member, shortly after the demise of the SSP.

A teacher by profession, he is currently (2007) headteacher of Wester Hailes Education Centre in Edinburgh. He writes on educational issues in SecEd and in the Times Educational Supplement Scotland.