Difference between revisions of "Kate Hoey"

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::"The Labour movement is coming round to believing Labour should campaign in every corner of the United Kingdom. The national executive must review its policy on membership in Northern Ireland," she added. "It is ridiculous that I can be a party member in Baghdad or Bali, but not in Belfast. How can attempts be made to solve the communal divide while the province is stuck in political limbo?"<ref>Call for Labour to Contest Ulster, Press Association, 15 July 1992.</ref>
 
::"The Labour movement is coming round to believing Labour should campaign in every corner of the United Kingdom. The national executive must review its policy on membership in Northern Ireland," she added. "It is ridiculous that I can be a party member in Baghdad or Bali, but not in Belfast. How can attempts be made to solve the communal divide while the province is stuck in political limbo?"<ref>Call for Labour to Contest Ulster, Press Association, 15 July 1992.</ref>
  
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In February 1993, Hoey and Democracy Now welcomed a vote by Northern Ireland members of the [[Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union]] to affiliate to the British Labour Party. In contrast, the Labour Northern Ireland spokesman [[Kevin MacNamara]] said the margin of the vote, 3,587 votes to 2,823, showed the lack of cross-community support for the move.<ref>Frank Millar, Union confirms members want Labour Party to organise in Northern Ireland, Irish Times, 9 February 1993.</ref>
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In February 1993, Hoey and Democracy Now welcomed a vote by Northern Ireland members of the [[Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union]] to affiliate to the British Labour Party. In contrast, the Labour Northern Ireland spokesman [[Kevin McNamara]] said the margin of the vote, 3,587 votes to 2,823, showed the lack of cross-community support for the move.<ref>Frank Millar, Union confirms members want Labour Party to organise in Northern Ireland, Irish Times, 9 February 1993.</ref>
  
 
In early July 1993, Hoey and Raynsford wrote to the Guardian as co-chairs of Democracy Now:
 
In early July 1993, Hoey and Raynsford wrote to the Guardian as co-chairs of Democracy Now:
 
::PATRICK WINTOUR'S report on Kevin McNamara's policy document on Northern Ireland makes interesting reading (June 29). There is certainly a need for an open and comradely debate within the Labour movement on Northern Ireland. Would that debate not be much better informed, and Labour have much more credibility, if people in Northern Ireland were involved in that debate? Currently labour excludes people in Northern Ireland from membership.<ref>Kate Hoey, Nick Raynsford, Letters: Path to peace, The Guardian, 1 July 1993.</ref>
 
::PATRICK WINTOUR'S report on Kevin McNamara's policy document on Northern Ireland makes interesting reading (June 29). There is certainly a need for an open and comradely debate within the Labour movement on Northern Ireland. Would that debate not be much better informed, and Labour have much more credibility, if people in Northern Ireland were involved in that debate? Currently labour excludes people in Northern Ireland from membership.<ref>Kate Hoey, Nick Raynsford, Letters: Path to peace, The Guardian, 1 July 1993.</ref>
  
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Later that month, Hoey, Raynsford and [[Harry Barnes]] crticised Macnamara over a pamphlet he co-authored entitled ''Oranges and Lemons'':
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Later that month, Hoey, Raynsford and [[Harry Barnes]] criticised Mcnamara over a pamphlet he co-authored entitled ''Oranges and Lemons'':
  
 
::In a statement, the three MPs said Mr McNamara's pamphlet attacks supporters of Democracy Now in a potentially libellous way and claims it describes the group, enjoying support from 30 MPs, "as a band of devotees specialising in shrill abuse of those with whom they disagree".
 
::In a statement, the three MPs said Mr McNamara's pamphlet attacks supporters of Democracy Now in a potentially libellous way and claims it describes the group, enjoying support from 30 MPs, "as a band of devotees specialising in shrill abuse of those with whom they disagree".

Revision as of 22:15, 5 April 2011

Kate Hoey is the Labour MP for Vauxhall.[1] She is also an advisor to the Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson on Sport.[2]

Background

Hoey was born in 1946 in Antrim, Northern Ireland, where her parents were farmers.[3][4]

She has said this period:

I had a happy childhood. I was a real tomboy and I loved the countryside. We weren't privileged; we were really very poor. It was a treat if my mum went into Belfast and and brought us back a pencil or a bar of chocolate. But we were never short of food because of all the eggs, milk, butter and vegetables we from the farm.[5]

Education

Hoey attended the Belfast Royal Academy and the Ulster College of Physical Education. She subsequently took an economics degree in London.[6]

She was elected a sabbatical Vice-President of the National Union of Students.[7]

During her time, as a student, Hoey was a member of the International Marxist Group.[8]

Political career

According to the Independent, Hoey joined the Labour Party in 1972.[9]

She served as a councillor in the London Borough of Hackney from 1978 to 1982.[10]

Hoey contested the Dulwich consituency in the 1983 and 1987 general elections.[11] In 1987, she was defeated by just 180 votes, the smallest majority in the country.[12]

She served a councillor in Southwark from 1988 to 1989.[13] At the time of here election, she was working as a freelance sports writer.[14]

She was elected to Parliament on 15 June 1989, winning a by-election in Vauxhall.[15]

Hoey served as Opposition Spokesperson for Citizen's Charter and Women 1992-93; PPS to Frank Field as Minister of State, Department of Social Security 1997-98; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State: Home Office (Metropolitan Police, European Union, Judicial Co-operation) 1998-99, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Minister for Sport) 1999-2001.[16]

In April 2008, Hoey agreed to act as an advisor to Conservative Boris Johnson if he was elected as Mayor of London. This led to a meeting with Labour chief whip Geoff Hoon, following which Hoey announced that her role for Johnson would be on a non-partisan basis, and she would be voting Labour in the Mayoral election.[17]

In May 2009, Hoey said she would not be devastated by a Conservative electoral victory:

"Because the Conservatives have changed their image a bit we don't get that venom that used to come out of people when the word Tory was mentioned.
"You're asking me 'would I be devastated?' No absolutely not. Even people who are voting Labour, that Thatcher (comparison) is no more meaningful to them than Tories talking about us and rubbish on the streets and not burying the dead.[18]

Along with Frank Field, Hoey was one of the first MPs to nominate John McDonnell during the Labour leadership election in 2010.[19] This was greeted with suspicion by some who questioned why MPs seen to be on the right of the party were nominating a figure associated with the left. The New Statesman's James Macintrye said of Field and Hoey: "Both are the subject of Tory dreams that they may defect"[20]

Northern Ireland Policy

In 1989, as a junior front-bencher, Hoey attended a Labour conference fringe meeting organised by the Campaign for Labour Representation in Northern Ireland. John Pienaar reported:

they were pressing on with the task of handing leaflets to anyone prepared to take one, and taking limited encouragement from the presence of a junior Labour front-bencher, Kate Hoey, at their conference fringe meeting.
The party leaders show no sign of relenting. Extending Labour's front into Ulster, they say, would run counter to the policy of reunification of Ireland by consent.
There is also a suspicion in some circles that the campaign is to some extent driven by a form of 'closet unionism'; a motive the Belfast campaigners attribute freely to their Tory counterparts.[21]

In the 1990 Upper Bann by-election, Hoey supported Erskine Holmes, of a pressure group called The Right to Vote Labour.[22][23]

In July 1992, Hoey and Nick Raynsford launched the Democracy Now campaign calling on Labour to organise in Northern Ireland:

"The Labour movement is coming round to believing Labour should campaign in every corner of the United Kingdom. The national executive must review its policy on membership in Northern Ireland," she added. "It is ridiculous that I can be a party member in Baghdad or Bali, but not in Belfast. How can attempts be made to solve the communal divide while the province is stuck in political limbo?"[24]

In February 1993, Hoey and Democracy Now welcomed a vote by Northern Ireland members of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union to affiliate to the British Labour Party. In contrast, the Labour Northern Ireland spokesman Kevin McNamara said the margin of the vote, 3,587 votes to 2,823, showed the lack of cross-community support for the move.[25]

In early July 1993, Hoey and Raynsford wrote to the Guardian as co-chairs of Democracy Now:

PATRICK WINTOUR'S report on Kevin McNamara's policy document on Northern Ireland makes interesting reading (June 29). There is certainly a need for an open and comradely debate within the Labour movement on Northern Ireland. Would that debate not be much better informed, and Labour have much more credibility, if people in Northern Ireland were involved in that debate? Currently labour excludes people in Northern Ireland from membership.[26]

Later that month, Hoey, Raynsford and Harry Barnes criticised Mcnamara over a pamphlet he co-authored entitled Oranges and Lemons:

In a statement, the three MPs said Mr McNamara's pamphlet attacks supporters of Democracy Now in a potentially libellous way and claims it describes the group, enjoying support from 30 MPs, "as a band of devotees specialising in shrill abuse of those with whom they disagree".
The pamphlet claims the group uses the tactics once deployed by the entryist Militant Tendency. Mr McNamara also dismisses Democracy Now as electoral integrationists or closet Unionists opposed to Labour's long-term goal of reuniting Ireland.[27]

In the wake of this episode, Irish Times correspondent Frank Millar wrote:

It is clear that Democracy Now campaigners have their sights firmly fixed on Mr McNamara. Following publication recently of his proposals for movement toward joint sovereignty, their hope is that a declining vote in this autumn's shadow cabinet elections could see him removed from the Northern Ireland job.[28]

Hoey spoke again on Labour organising in Northern Ireland at the 1993 party conference:

At a fringe meeting on Tuesday night, she insisted: "There is no party (in the North) which crosses the sectarian divide." And she simply couldn't grasp the concept of the SDLP as a sister party "when so many of its policies are anathema to women members of the Labour Party."[29]

Following the Downing Street Declaration in December 1993, Hoey asked Prime Minister John Major:

In paragraph 4, the Prime Minister reiterates on behalf of the Government that Britain has no selfish strategic or economic interest in northern Ireland. Even if hon. Members do not like it, they must accept that many people in Northern Ireland will regard that as a betrayal, even if we think it is wrong. Will the Prime Minister clarify what he means by that sentence? Does not he, as a British Prime Minister, think that British citizens, many of whom lost members of their families fighting for this country in the war, might feel a little sad? Will he say what he really means by it?[30]

Connections

Joan Hoey, sister.

Resources

Notes

  1. ↑ Kate Hoey, www.parliament.uk, accessed 5 April 2011.
  2. ↑ Kate Hoey, Greater London Authority, accessed 5 April 2011.
  3. ↑ Home page, katehoey.com, accessed 5 April 2011.
  4. ↑ Brian Viner, Hoey a tireless captain of the awkward squad, The Independent, 1 March 2003.
  5. ↑ Louise Atkinson, I HOPE THAT SOMEONE IN THE HOUSE FANCIES ME; LABOUR MP KATE HOEY TALKS ABOUT KEEPING UP APPEARANCES, Daily Mail, 15 December 1992.
  6. ↑ Home page, katehoey.com, accessed 5 April 2011.
  7. ↑ Home page, katehoey.com, accessed 5 April 2011.
  8. ↑ Ministers on the up, BBC News, 29 July 1999.
  9. ↑ Brian Viner, Hoey a tireless captain of the awkward squad, The Independent, 1 March 2003.
  10. ↑ Brian Viner, Hoey a tireless captain of the awkward squad, The Independent, 1 March 2003.
  11. ↑ Kate Hoey, www.parliament.uk, accessed 5 April 2011.
  12. ↑ Jane Slade, War of Words, The Times, 2 November 1988.
  13. ↑ Brian Viner, Hoey a tireless captain of the awkward squad, The Independent, 1 March 2003.
  14. ↑ Jane Slade, War of Words, The Times, 2 November 1988.
  15. ↑ Kate Hoey, www.parliament.uk, accessed 5 April 2011.
  16. ↑ Kate Hoey, www.parliament.uk, accessed 5 April 2011.
  17. ↑ Sam Johnson, Labour MP denies defection in mayoral campaign, The Guardian, 30 April 2008.
  18. ↑ Melissa Kite, Kate Hoey: I would not be devastated if the Conservatives won the election, Telegraph, 5 April 2011.
  19. ↑ McDonnell gets first backing in Labour leadership fight, BBC News, 26 May 2010.
  20. ↑ Kiss of Death for Labour's most leftist candidates, James Macintyre, New Statesman, 27 May 2010.
  21. ↑ John Pienaar, The Labour Party Conference: Voices labouring for a lost cause, The Independent, 3 October 1989.
  22. ↑ Edward Gorman, Tories are back on Ulster election trail, The Times, 9 May 1990.
  23. ↑ Deric Henderson, Northern Irish Seek Legal Right to Vote Labour, Press Association, 11 May 1990.
  24. ↑ Call for Labour to Contest Ulster, Press Association, 15 July 1992.
  25. ↑ Frank Millar, Union confirms members want Labour Party to organise in Northern Ireland, Irish Times, 9 February 1993.
  26. ↑ Kate Hoey, Nick Raynsford, Letters: Path to peace, The Guardian, 1 July 1993.
  27. ↑ Patrick Wintour, MCNAMARA'S PAMPHLET ON ULSTER ABUSIVE, SAY MPS, The Guardian, 27 July 1993.
  28. ↑ Frank Millar, British Labour Party rejects call to organise in NI, Irish Times, 28 July 1993.
  29. ↑ Frank Millar, Labour fringe becomes nasty front in Irish war, Irish Times, 30 September 1993.
  30. ↑ [http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=1993-12-15a.1091.5 Ireland (Joint Declaration) House of Commons debates, 15 December 1993, 3:30 pm], TheyWorkForYou.com.
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