Frances Curran

Frances Curran (born 21 May 1961) is a leading activist in the Scottish Socialist Party. She was a member of the Scottish Parliament for West of Scotland during 2003-07.^[1] She was an unsuccessful candidate in the July 2008 Glasgow East by-election.^[2] During the campaign, she was informed that the police had received death threats against her.^[3]

She was formerly a member of the Labour Party and organiser for the entryist left wing Militant tendency group within the Party.^[4] As a member of the Labour Party, she served as Youth representative on the party's National Executive Committee as a representative of the Militant-dominated Labour Party Young Socialists in the early 1980s. She joined the Scottish Socialist Party when it was formed in 1998.^[1]

Campaigning

In July 2005, Curran played a leading role in organising the peaceful protest outside Gleneagles at the 2005 G8 Summit - as part of the G8 Alternatives group.^[5] The previous week, she and other SSP MSPs took part in a protest within the Scottish Parliament, which led to them being suspended for the month of September and fined £30,000. This protest was due to their claim that the First Minister had gone back on his word that the parliament would support the rally outside the Perthshire hotel.

She has been campaigning for nutritious school meals to be provided free of charge to all Scottish schoolchildren, to tackle the twinned problems of ill health and bad diet in Scottish schoolchildren. Her campaign has attracted a wide base of support from a number of children's and health related charities. A bill to this effect was proposed in parliament in 2002 but was defeated, the bill is was resubmitted, following a Scottish Executive consultation which found that 96% of respondents were in favour of free school meals, however ran out of time before the end of her parliamentary term. The SNP eventually introduced a pilot scheme to provide free meals to children in primaries 1-3 in the wake of this popular support.

As part of the Save Our Services campaign Frances was involved in community occupations to stop the closure of a school and community centre.

In January 2007 she was arrested but not charged at a peaceful anti-nuclear protest at Faslane as part of the Faslane 365 campaign.^[6]

The SSP selected her as its no. 1 candidate in the Glasgow regional list for the Scottish Parliament election, 2011.^{[citation needed]}

At the SSP conference in April 2011 she stood down as joint national spokesperson, for family reasons, and to concentrate on the post of Glasgow West branch secretary.

In 2012 she was elected to the SSP executive, and she was its candidate for the Hillhead ward at the Glasgow City Council election.

References