Carolyn Leckie

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Carolyn Leckie is a member of the Scottish Parliament for central Scotland. She is also a member of the executive committee of the Scottish Socialist Party.

Carolyn Leckie is from East Kilbride. Before she was elected to the parliament in 2003 she was a midwife and a highly respected local union leader who represented thousands of hospital workers. She is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies).

[edit] Campaigning

Just before election to Holyrood, she led several victorious strikes against low pay - the most recent involving 300 ancillary workers against the French multinational, Sodexho. As an MSP she was a strong supporter of the Nursery Nurses campaigning for higher pay, including being thrown out of parliament for raising a point of order about the strike ^[1].

She has since been active within the parliament campaigning for an end to the cuts and closures in hospital services across Scotland.

On the 20th January 2005 she was jailed for seven days for non-payment of a fine, arising from a protest outside Faslane nuclear base. She faced the possibility of being removed from the register of midwives by her professional body, but the disciplinary action has since been dropped. In January 2007 she was arrested but not charged for taking part in an anti-nuclear demonstration at Faslane as part of the Faslane 365 campaign.

[edit] Other Information

She was co-chair of the SSP for several years. She stood down at its annual conference in March 2006, stating that it was time to hand the post over to a lay member of the party, but she was easily elected as an ordinary member of its executive committee.

She was one of several members who gave evidence in the Sheridan v News International defamation action. During the trial Tommy Sheridan's counsel alleged that Alan McCombes and Carolyn Leckie were lovers and "had wanted to take over at the top".[1]