Katy Clark

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Katy Clark MP
Katy Clark
Member of Parliament
for North Ayrshire and Arran
Incumbent
Assumed office 
5 May 2005
Preceded by Brian Wilson
Majority 11,296 (25.6%)
Born 3 July 1967 (1967-07-03) (age 40)
Kilwinning
Nationality Scottish
Political party Labour
Alma mater University of Aberdeen

Katy Clark (born 3 July 1967, Kilwinning) is a British politician and trade union official. She is the Labour Member of Parliament for North Ayrshire and Arran.

Contents

[edit] Early life

She went to Ayr Grammar Primary School, then Kyle Academy, Overmills Road, both in Ayr. Clark was educated at the University of Aberdeen, receiving an LLB in 1990. She was the chairwoman of the Labour club there. She received a Diploma in Legal Practice from the University of Edinburgh in 1991. She is a solicitor, in Edinburgh and Musselburgh from 1991-8, turned legal officer with UNISON in London, from 1998-2005. She joined the Labour Party at the age of seventeen and is a member of the TGWU and UNISON Union. Her great-great grandfather, former coal-miner Alexander Sloan, was Labour MP for South Ayrshire from 1939 until his death in 1946.

[edit] Parliamentary career

She unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary seat of Galloway and Upper Nithsdale at the 1997 General Election, a traditional Conservative and Scottish National Party (SNP) marginal. She finished in third place, but the main story there being that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Ian Lang had lost his seat to the SNP's Alasdair Morgan.

She was elected to the House of Commons at the 2005 General Election for the new seat of North Ayrshire and Arran, based substantially on the former seat of Cunninghame North whose MP, Brian Wilson had retired, and the towns of Stevenston and Kilwinning from the old Cunninghame South. She had a majority of 11,296, and made her maiden speech on June 7, 2005.[1]

She was nominated for House Magazine's 'Maiden Speech of the Year'.

Following the election, The Guardian named her as one of eight new MPs "to watch". One of the few stridently left-wing members of Labour's 2005 intake of MPs, she is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group and the Scottish Labour Party Campaign for Socialism; of the twenty-four members of the Campaign Group, she is the only one under the age of 50. Clark quickly established a reputation as a rebel within the Parliamentary Labour Party, voting against ID cards. However, she does she not consider herself to be a rebel, stating that her "views are consistent with Labour's traditions".[2]

Since being elected she has campaigned against the contracting out of lifeline ferry services in her constituency and for employment and retraining for workers at the Simclar factory in her constituency after the factory closed. She has campaigned consistently on human rights issues and was one of 95 Labour MPs who opposed replacing Britain's Trident nuclear weapons system.

[edit] External links

[edit] Video clips