Rosie Kane
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rosie Kane (born Rosemary Kane on June 5, 1961 in Glasgow) is a member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow. She is a member of the Scottish Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies).
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[edit] Background
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.
[edit] Role in the Scottish Socialist Party
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.
[edit] Political Activism
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 is active in the fight to end the detention of children at Dungavel asylum detention centre, as well as campaigns for migrants rights and against dawn raids. She personally paid the bail for a Cameroonian woman called Mercy Ikolo and her Ireland-born 18 month old baby to allow them to leave the centre, inviting them to stay with her and her daughters in their tenement flat until their visa issues were resolved.
In 2005 Kane accepted an invitation to meet Fidel Castro at a conference in Cuba.[1] She caused controversy when she took part in an anti-nuclear protest, locking herself to a model nuclear submarine outside the Scottish parliament.[2]. She was fined £150 for the demonstration, and was jailed for 14 days in October 2006 for refusing to pay the fine.
In June 2005 she was suspended from the Scottish Parliament for the month of September due to her part in a peaceful protest by way of disrupting parliamentary proceedings along with fellow socialist MSPs Carolyn Leckie, Frances Curran and Colin Fox. They were highlighting the issue of the right to protest outside the Gleneagles Hotel, the site of the 31st G8 summit.
[edit] Other Information
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.
She has a regular column "Rosie Kane" in the Sunday Mail.
She was one of several SSP members who were witnesses in Sheridan v News International.
