Alice Mahon

Alice Mahon, born in September 1937, was Member of Parliament for Halifax from 1987 until 2005. She is a left-winger and Eurosceptic, and frequently rebelled against the New Labour government elected in 1997. She voted against fox hunting and the Iraq war, and in 2005 spoke in Parliament against the “hideous abuse of human rights and international law” of Guantanamo Bay. She also spoke strongly in favour of equal gay rights and reform of the House of Lords.

Suffering from failing eyesight (she has age-related macular degeneration) she stepped down from the House of Commons at the 2005 General Election, and in April 2009 she announced she was leaving the Labour party, claiming the "smeargate" scandal was the last straw. She had considered leaving after she quit Parliament, but remained to see if Mr Brown could make Labour "caring". She said: "I couldn't have been more wrong." (Independent on Sunday, 19/4/09)

She remains active in left-wing politics, particularly through the Stop the War coalition and CND. She also campaigns for better funding for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration and has threatened to take Calderdale Primary Care Trust, which refused her treatment, to the High Court.

She has been an active supporter of humanist causes. In July 2001 she was one of the signatories to a letter published in The Independent which urged the Government to reconsider its support for the expansion of maintained religious schools, and in July 2002 she was one of the distinguished humanists who read extracts from James Kirkup's poem “The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name” in a public challenge to the blasphemy law outside St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square. She is also an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.

See also
Alice Mahon's voting record here and her Parliamentary speeches here.
Her Wikipedia biography

August 2007