Rosie Kane
|
|
Rosie_kane.jpg
Rosemary Kane known to everybody as Rosie Kane(born June 5, 1961) is a member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow. She is a member of the Scottish Socialist Party.
Kane entered politics after becoming involved in a campaign against the extension of the M77 motorway. She is a prominent opponent of the M74 extension plan, and campaigned against the treatment of toxic waste in South East Glasgow. She has also campaigned against water fluoridation and GM crops.
In 1996 she was the first ever candidate of the newly formed Scottish Socialist Alliance when she contested a Glasgow City Council by-election in the Toryglen ward, an area threatened by the M74 extension plan, and came third with a creditable 18%. After this she was an election candidate a number of times for the Scottish Socialist Alliance and its successor the Scottish Socialist Party, and in 2003 she was elected as an MSP in Glasgow as the party's no. 2 candidate in the regional list, behind Tommy Sheridan, its convenor at the time.
She is most famous for her gesture when as a new MSP she took the oath to the Queen with her hand raised and the words "My oath is to the people" written on it. In a newspaper interview she promised to bring a little "craziness" to the Parliament. Kane was active in the fight to end the detention of children at Dungavel asylum detention camp, when she personally paid the bail for an African mother and 18 month old baby, and then allowed them to stay with her and her daughters in their tenement flat until their visa issues were resolved.
In late 2003 she announced that she was taking a short break from politics to deal with clinical depression. When criticised by another MSP for lack of attendance in the chamber and for not having made many speeches, she described how her hands had begun uncontrollably shaking under her desk, and blamed the Parliament's "macho boys club" of personal attacks for exacerbating the problem (although her own party was accused of being part of this culture). She has since returned to work and has been active in both refugee issues and anti-war work.
In 2005 she continued to cause controversy when she took part in a protest in a model nuclear submarine outside the Scottish parliament [1] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4336221.stm), and when she accepted an invitation to meet Fidel Castro at a conference in Cuba [2] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4590953.stm).