Christine Mary Crawley, Baroness Crawley FRSA (born 9 January 1950) is a British politician for the Labour Party.
Crawley was educated at the Notre Dame Roman Catholic Girls' School in Birmingham before going to Digby Stuart College to train as a teacher.[1] After graduation she began teaching children aged between 9 and 15, and also ran the local youth theatre.[2] Her work to gain funding for the youth theatre brought her into contact with local politicians, and she became involved in politics, joining the Labour Party.[2] Soon after joining the party she became secretary of the local branch, and then Social Secretary for the local Women's Branch.[2] She was elected as a District Councillor for the South Oxfordshire District Council, at a time when the Labour Party was a minority party on the council.[2]
In 1983 she ran for a seat in the House of Commons but was not elected, instead spending a year working on local issues before she was elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Birmingham East constituency).[2] As an MEP Crawley was active on the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality and helped push their Maternity Leave Directive through, becoming Chair of that committee in 1989.[3] She stepped down as an MEP in 1999, and is now a member of the West Midlands Regional Assembly and a sponsor of the National Women's Network.[3] She was Chair of the Women's National Commission between 1999 and 2001, and in 1998 was created Baroness Crawley, of Edgbaston in the County of West Midlands.[4] Between 2002 and 2008 she served as a Party Whip in the House of Lords.