Alice Mahon | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2005 | |
| Member of Parliament forHalifax | |
| In office 11 June 1987 – 11 April 2005 | |
| Preceded by | Roy Galley |
| Succeeded by | Linda Riordan |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Alice Bottomley (1937-09-28)28 September 1937 Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 25 December 2022(2022-12-25) (aged 85) Halifax, West Yorkshire, England |
| Political party | Labour (until 2009; after 2015) |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | 3 |
| Alma mater | University of Bradford (BA) |
Alice Mahon (née Bottomley; 28 September 1937 – 25 December 2022) was a British trade unionist andLabour politician who served asMember of Parliament (MP) forHalifax from1987 until2005.
Mahon was a left-winger who was a member of theSocialist Campaign Group and was aEurosceptic, and a frequent rebel against Labour'sBlair government. She left the House of Commons in 2005 and resigned from the Labour Party in 2009, expressing objections to the party's political positions and internal operations. However, she rejoined the party in 2015 in support ofJeremy Corbyn's election as leader.
Born Alice Bottomley[1] inButtershaw, Bradford, she attended grammar school in Halifax and worked in theNational Health Service as a nursing auxiliary for ten years.[2] In 1979, she gained a BA in Social Policy from theUniversity of Bradford and taught Trade Union Studies atBradford College from 1979 to 1987.[3] Meanwhile, she was a councillor onCalderdale Council.
Mahon was first elected for theHalifax constituency at the 1987 general election. In 1994, commenting onTony Blair, Mahon toldChris Mullin that she was "in the Stop Blair camp" of the party.[4]
Mahon opposed themissile defence plans during her period in the House of Commons and sought to protect benefits for parents,women's rights (particularly regarding abortion), andgay rights. Mahon was also a supporter ofreform of the House of Lords.[5] She was opposed to theIraq War, speaking in 2004 of the "cruel barbarism that has been inflicted upon Iraq".[6] She told the 2003Labour Party Conference, "we were lied to about WMD and there is no delicate way of putting it".[7]
In a July 2003 Commons debate, she queried the support ofJohn Reid, then theSecretary of State for Health forFoundation Hospitals: "How can the Secretary of State stand there as a Scottish MP who is not going to have one of these divisive hospitals, and yet is voting to inflict them on the people of Halifax?" In a version ofTam Dalyell'sWest Lothian question, the government in the subsequent parliamentary division would have lost the vote without the support of Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs.[8] Labour's majority of 164 was reduced to 17 because of votes against the motion and abstentions.[9] "As English MPs, we have to settle this question of Scots and Welsh MPs voting for things they're not going to have", Mahon said at the time.[8]
In November 2005, a film documentary bySigfrido Ranucci of Italy'sRai News 24,The Hidden Massacre, asserted that the US military had usedwhite phosphorus (WP) as anincendiary weapon, including against civilians in theSecond Battle of Fallujah.[10] The RAI documentary also quoted a 13 June 2005 UK MOD letter[11] to Mahon, stating that:
The US destroyed its remaining stock of Vietnam eranapalm in 2001 but, according to the reports for 1 Marine Expeditionary Force (1 MEF) serving in Iraq in 2003, they used a total of 30MK 77 weapons in Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003, against military targets away from civilian areas. The MK 77 firebomb does not have the same composition as napalm, although it has similar destructive characteristics. The Pentagon has also told us that owing to the limited accuracy of the MK 77, it is not generally used in urban terrain or in areas where civilians are congregated.
Mahon was a defence witness in thetrial of Slobodan Milošević in 2006. Following the testimony of Slobodan Jarčević, foreign minister of the self-declaredRepublic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) in modern-day Croatia, from October 1992 until becoming foreign policy advisor to the RSK presidentMilan Martić in April 1994,Milošević called Mahon, who was an MP throughout the 1990s and sat on the NATO parliamentary committee from 1992.
In 1999, she said:[12]
Having visited Yugoslavia, I feel as strongly about the innocent civilian victims of laser-guided bombs as I do about victims of ethnic cleansing and the Albanian refugees who must have the right to return home in safety.
Mahon appeared to be critical of the generally accepted narrative of theRačak massacre.
She spoke at theInternational Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on 1 March 2006 and stated under examination:[13] "Yes, I think there is something highly suspicious about what happened at Racak." Judge Robinson responded, "But to say thatMr. Walker arranged it, that's a very serious --" which Mahon interjected to say, "Well, would you like me to say that I think Mr. Walker just happened to be there, and people disagreed with him profoundly about that being a massacre."[13]
Mahon suffered fromage-related macular degeneration (AMD), a disease which causes progressive blindness. Mahon lost most of the sight in one eye and expected to lose sight in the other.Calderdale Primary Care Trust refused to fund a drug which could stabilise or improve her condition, in 2007 she threatened to take the PCT to theHigh Court.[14]
Mahon resigned her membership of the Labour Party in April 2009, saying she could no longer condone how it operates. She toldBBC News that she had considered resigning in 2005, having "totally disapproved of everything Tony Blair was doing", but had been more optimistic of his eventual successor,Gordon Brown: "I hoped we might go back to being a caring and progressive party. In the event I couldn't have been more wrong".[5] She had backedJohn McDonnell's aborted Labour leadership campaign.[15]
In her letter to the HalifaxConstituency Labour Party, she wrote: "This Labour Government should hang its head in shame for inflicting [the Welfare Reform Bill] on the British public just as we face the most severe recession any of us have experienced in a lifetime." The Bill was criticised by a number of disability campaign groups[16] and Labour MPs[17] for not helping the disabled or unemployed. Mahon said she was dismayed at the impotence shown by the government in tackling energy providers andfinancial institutions. She also condemned the failure of the party to stick to its election manifesto, including pledges not to privatise theRoyal Mail and to give the country a referendum on theEU Constitution (which later became theLisbon Treaty).[5] Thesmear tactics attempted by Brown's by then former officialDamian McBride and lobbyistDerek Draper, which became known around this time, were also a factor in her decision to leave the Labour Party.[18] She toldThe Yorkshire Post:
My stepdaughter Rachel said to me: 'How could they do that to people likeDavid Cameron and his wifeSamantha when they had recently lost their son Ivan? What kind of people think it would be a good idea to smear them?' I was sickened by that – that is not the Labour Party that I joined all those years ago. [...] Quite simply I have had it withNew Labour.[19]
Mahon remained active in left-wing politics, including theCampaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and theStop the War Coalition, of which she was apatron.[20] She was a Distinguished Supporter ofHumanists UK, and an Honorary Associate of theNational Secular Society. TheNo2EU campaign said she had decided to support them in theJune 2009 European Parliament election.[21][22][23]
Mahon was interviewed in 2012 as part ofThe History of Parliament'soral history project.[24]
She re-joined Labour in 2015 following the election ofJeremy Corbyn as party leader.[25]
Mahon was married to John Gledhill until the couple divorced in 1972.[3] She then married Tony Mahon, and they remained together until his death in January 2022.[2] She had two sons from her first marriage and a stepdaughter from her second.[3] She was a longtime resident ofNorthowram, West Yorkshire.[2]
Mahon died at a care home in Halifax on 25 December 2022, at the age of 85.[2] A remembrance service was held atHalifax Minster on 6 March 2023, and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was in attendance.[26]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forHalifax 1987–2005 | Succeeded by |
