Biography
- Green Party Parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn
- Green Party candidate, Camden Council, Bloomsbury ward.
- Writer – journalist, broadcaster, playwright
- Provocative and influential feminist
- Born in Carlisle and frequently mistaken as a Geordie which she would be honoured to be, but isn’t.
- Angry Harry website reckons she is promoted by ‘the feminist controlled BBC and the Guardian newspaper’ and describes her as ‘one of the most revolting women that I have ever comes across.’
- Melissa Benn said she writes with ‘lyrical brutality’
- Martin Jacques said, ‘her secret weapon is charm’.
- She was active in the Women’s Liberation Movement. One of the founders of Red Rag, a Marxist and feminist journal.
- Worked for the Morning Star (formerly the Daily Worker), member of the Communist Party, active among the anti-stalinists opposed to the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the authoritarianism of party structures, and the feminists who criticised the sexism of socialist and communist parties.
- A member of the Free Communications Group, that published Open Secret and campaigned against monopoly ownership of the mass media.
- Whilst working as a reporter on Time Out, involved in an equal pay strike and occupation in 1981. Joined the majority of staff in setting up the co-operatively-owned magazine City Limits.
- Columnist on the influential Marxism Today during its peak years in the 1980s, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It coined the term ‘Thatcherism”.
- Collaborated with Judith Jones on two successful plays
- Writer in Residence in Prison – supporting young men ‘sorting stuff out’ by creative writing.
- Many awards – Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize, Fawcett Prize, and several honorary doctorates for her work on community, crime, and most recently children’s welfare. OBE in 2009 for services to equality.