Music and politics have shaped Tom’s life.
He is a renowned campaigner, a Mercury Prize-winning musician and the elected Chair of the British Association of Songwriters, Composers & Authors (The Ivors Academy). A high-profile advocate, his campaigning has led a global conversation around rights and equity in his industry.
Tom joined the Labour Party aged 15 and studied politics in Leeds before his career in music took off. He has been a stalwart of grassroots party activism, organising and volunteering over the course of his life. He works closely with the Musicians Union on their campaigns alongside the organisation he leads. As a result, he is familiar to many in Westminster as an outspoken champion of music and the arts.
He founded the #BrokenRecord campaign in 2020. Garnering the support of over 200 of the country’s greatest music-makers (Sir Paul McCartney and Kate Bush amongst them), he was successful in bringing about a UK parliamentary inquiry into the music industry. He coordinated a private members bill with Kevin Brennan MP, forced a CMA study and there is now a formal process with the British government to investigate industry interventions in which Tom is a lead negotiator. He considers the forgiveness of historic debt held against thousands of musicians to be his greatest campaigning achievement.
As a founding member of Gomez, he won the Mercury Prize in 1998. Still occasionally a working musician, he scored the first series of the BAFTA-winning ‘In My Skin’ for the BBC and is presently commissioned to write a stage adaptation of ‘Danny the Champion of the World’ for the Roald Dahl Story Company.
Tom also sits on the PRS Council, is a director of UK Music and regularly works with the Helen Bamber Foundation Charity on their campaigns for victims of trafficking and torture.
