At Westminster in the 1970s she was regarded as something of a left-wing nuisance , a state of affairs that she viewed as necessary and desirable. This led to a landmark 1992 report, which prompted the Conservative government to endorse the committee's findings and led to policies which offered women more choice and control of their circumstances during pregnancy, birth and post-natal care. Fiercely protective of her close, fond family life, she married her husband, John, a dispensing optician in 1953. During the 1970s she was a leading member of the Institute for Workers' Control. At the age of 21, she became a Tottenham borough councillor in north London. In 1997 Audrey Wise was ousted from the Presidency of USDAW, a position she had held for the previous six years. Once back, for Preston, she was made a member of the health select committee and persuaded her fellow members to hold an inquiry into maternity services. The Labour Government was far from amused to have to give back £450 million to the taxpayer. She lost her Coventry seat in the 1979 general election and was out of parliament until 1987. Most significantly, with Jeff Rooker she co-authored the Rooker-Wise Amendment to Chancellor Denis Healey's 1977 finance bill. The Labour MP Audrey Wise, who has died of a brain tumour aged 65, was a socialist, a feminist and a fighter. She lost her Coventry seat at the general election of 1979, but achieved some compensation in 1981, when she was elected to Labour's National Executive, a position she held until 1987. Audrey Wise crusaded for equality for women, for workers' control, better maternity services, the rights of animals, battered wives, more liberal abortion laws, organic food and the Nicaraguan Sandanistas. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Audrey Wise (4 January 1932 – 2 September 2000) was a British Labour politician and Member of Parliament. She was president of the shop staff union USDAW between 1991-97. Left-wing Labour MP who infuriated Party leaders. In 1977 she made herself still more unpopular with the Whips when she and Jeffery Rooker broke ranks to introduce an amendment to the Finance Bill which, supported by the Tories, made personal tax allowances inflation-proof. But I was influenced by her through the bridging role she played between the women's liberation movement and the trade unions. For Audrey Wise, the struggle for what she conceived as social justice was everything, and the pursuit of power strictly a secondary consideration. Mon 4 Sep 2000 20.31 EDT Born in Newcastle, the daughter of a former Labour councillor, she lived and breathed politics every moment of her life. She served as MP for Coventry South West from February 1974-79, a period of tenuous Labour Government with marginal or no majorities. At the age of 21 she became a Tottenham borough councillor. [3] She was famously arrested on the picket line during the Grunwick dispute where Asian women workers were striking for union recognition. AUDREY WISE, the Labour MP for Preston, who has died aged 65, was a hard-line Left-winger of just the kind which Mr Blair and his associates do not wish to encourage. From 1982 to 1987, Wise was a trouble-making Labour national executive committee member and a forceful figure in a number of the party's campaigning organisations. She was then elected as MP for Preston in 1987, which she held until her death in 2000. At the general election of 1983, however, she lost the supposedly safe Labour seat of Woolwich East. Audrey Wise was born Audrey Brown in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the daughter of a former Labour councillor. "Mrs Wise has the gift of beginning her speeches in the sane, if flat, tones of a Geordie housewife who cannot tell Stork from butter," wrote Alan Watkins, "and of ending them sounding as if the men in white coats are about to descend at any minute." [2], As a member of the health select committee, she persuaded the committee to hold an inquiry into maternity services. When working with me, you can be assured of a solid work ethic, honesty, integrity and professionalism every step of the way. Join Facebook to connect with Audrey Wise and others you may know. She was one of the many people dismissed as "old Labour" who were always thinking creatively about the future. Her life combined the per sonal with the political in an exemplary way.
At 21 she became a councillor in Tottenham.
As her family said yesterday: "This was one fight she did not win." Their two children, a son and a daughter, were born at home, in conformity with Audrey Wise's view that pregnancy should be regarded as "a normal event, not an illness". The National Childbirth Trust's head of policy research, Mary Newburn, said that it was the impact of Wise's approach that had changed maternity services to become "woman-centred" and which has since led to a change throughout the NHS: the lives of women everywhere have been touched by her campaigning. The report,[5] endorsed by the Conservative government, called for services to become more woman-centred, and recommended increased access to home births and water births. And she contributed much to achieving that future. Returned for Preston in 1987, she found that the Labour Whips were unwilling to carry through a plan to make her chairman of the Select Committee on Social Services. It was on the behalf of women, children and families and, most specifically, about the way in which women experience childbirth.
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