Rosie Kane

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Rosie Kane

Rosie Kane (born on June 5, 1961 in Glasgow) is a member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow. She is a member of the Scottish Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies).

Kane entered politics after becoming involved in a campaign against the extension of the M77 motorway. She is a prominent opponent of the M74 extension plan, which under SSP proposals for free public transport would be scrapped in order to raise the capital costs involved.

In 1996 she was the first ever candidate of the newly formed Scottish Socialist Alliance when she contested a Glasgow City Council by-election in the Toryglen ward, an area threatened by the M74 extension plan, and came third with a creditable 18%. After this she was an election candidate a number of times for the Scottish Socialist Alliance and its successor the Scottish Socialist Party, and in 2003 she was elected as an MSP in Glasgow.

She served on the National Executive committee of the party for a number of years and as the party's environmental spokesperson, writing a column One World for the Scottish Socialist Voice. In December 2006 the SSP selected her as its top candidate on the Glasgow regional list for the Scottish Parliament election, 2007.

She is most famous for her gesture when as a new MSP she took the oath to the Queen with her hand raised and the words "My oath is to the people" written on it. In a newspaper interview she promised to bring a little "craziness" to the Parliament.

[edit] Campaigning

Kane is active in the fight to end the detention of children at Dungavel asylum detention centre, as well as campaigns for migrants rights and against dawn raids. She personally paid the bail for a Cameroonian woman called Mercy Ikolo and her Ireland-born 18 month old baby to allow them to leave the centre, inviting them to stay with her and her daughters in their tenement flat until their visa issues were resolved.

In 2005 Kane accepted an invitation to meet Fidel Castro at a conference in Cuba.[1] Later that year she caused controversy when she took part in an anti-nuclear protest, locking herself to a model nuclear submarine outside the Scottish parliament.[2]. She was fined £150 for the demonstration, and was imprisoned in Cornton Vale for 14 days in October 2006 for refusing to pay the fine. In January 2007 she was arrested but not charged for taking part in an peaceful anti-nuclear demonstration at Faslane, as part of the Faslane 365 campaign.

In June 2005 she was suspended from the Scottish Parliament for the month of September due to her part in a peaceful protest by way of disrupting parliamentary proceedings along with fellow socialist MSPs Carolyn Leckie, Frances Curran and Colin Fox. They were highlighting the issue of the right to protest outside the Gleneagles Hotel, the site of the 31st G8 summit.

She has also campaigned against the treatment of toxic waste in South East Glasgow, against water fluoridation and against GM crops.