Jane Griffiths (politician)
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Jane Patricia Griffiths (b. 17 April 1954, London) is a United Kingdom lingust and politician. She held positions as a Labour councillor on Reading Borough Council, and as Labour Member of Parliament for the Reading East parliamentary constituency. A controversial figure in her constituency, she was deselected as MP and subsequently rendered bankrupt.
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[edit] Early life
Jane Griffiths was born to John and Pat Griffiths. She was educated at the Cedars Grammar School, Leighton Buzzard and St Mary's College, University of Durham. She has a BA in French and Russian. She is married to fellow former councillor Andrew Tattersall and has two children, Martha and Toby.[1]
From 1977 to 1984, Griffiths worked as a linguist at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the UK electronic intelligence operation in Cheltenham. From 1984 until 1997 she worked as a foreign news editor for BBC Monitoring and the BBC World Service in Reading. Besides her native English, she speaks Russian, French, Japanese and Korean.[1]
[edit] Politics
From 1989 to 1999, Griffiths was a Labour councillor on Reading Borough Council, holding various senior positions. In the general election of 1997, she was elected as Member of Parliament for the Reading East parliamentary constituency, a position she retained in the following general election in 2001 and until the 2005 general election.[2] She was the first woman elected to represent a Reading seat.
In 2004 her constituency Labour Party deselected her, and replaced her with local councillor Tony Page. This was the first deselection of a sitting MP in the United Kingdom for ten years. The press reported soon afterwards suggested that she might defect from the Labour Party to the Conservative Party, but she did not.[3][4]
[edit] Bankruptcy and since
Four days after the 2005 general election it was revealed that Jane had been declared bankrupt, owing £29,000 to the Inland Revenue. This would have disqualified her from retaking her seat in the House of Commons had she been reselected and reelected. She failed to appear at her bankruptcy hearing before Reading County Court on Monday 19 September 2005 and a warrant was subsequently issued for her arrest. After convincing the court she had the assets to pay her debts and would co-operate with the proceedings, the warrant was discharged. However her discharge from bankruptcy was subsequently suspended on the grounds that she was not co-operating, stating that she was in Latvia. This was incorrectly reported in the local press as her being made bankrupt a second time.[5][6][7]
Jane Griffiths now writes a political blog, called 'janestheone' after her election slogan in earlier days, and is training to be a teacher. On her blog, Jane describes herself as a writer, linguist and political blogger and as being internationalist, anti-totalitarian and pro-democracy everywhere in the world.[8]
[edit] Trivia
- A keen rat fancier, Jane owns two rats. As an MP, she even dedicated a page on her former website about them.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Ask Aristotle - Griffiths, Jane - Biography. Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved on August 14, 2006.
- ^ Ask Aristotle - Griffiths, Jane - Summary. Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved on August 14, 2006.
- ^ Party votes out Reading MP. BBC. Retrieved on August 14, 2006.
- ^ Howard urged to be as daring as Thatcher. Daily Telegraph. Retrieved on August 14, 2006.
- ^ Ex-MP Jane to appear in court over bankruptcy. Retrieved on August 14, 2006.
- ^ Arrest warrant for deselected MP. BBC. Retrieved on August 14, 2006.
- ^ Dumped MP Jane bankrupt again. Reading Post. Retrieved on August 14, 2006.
- ^ janestheone. Jane Griffiths. Retrieved on August 14, 2006.
