Eleanor Smith (politician)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Eleanor Patricia Smith (born 5 July 1957) is a British Labour politician and trade unionist who served as the
Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...
(MP) for
Wolverhampton South West Wolverhampton South West is a constituency created in 1950 represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2019 by Stuart Anderson of the Conservative Party. It was represented by the Conservative Party for 47 years after its ...
from
2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...
to
2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
. She served as the President of the trade union
Unison In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or per ...
from 2011 to 2012, and the Vice President from 2009 to 2011.


Early career

Smith started training to be a nurse in 1977, and worked as theatre nurse from 1984–2017 at
Birmingham Women's NHS Foundation Trust Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust ran Birmingham Women's Hospital in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, situated very close to the University of Birmingham. On 1 February 2008, it was granted NHS Foundation Trust Status. It m ...
. Smith was elected to serve as the first black woman President, from 2011 to 2012, and Vice President, from 2009 to 2011, of the trade union
Unison In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or per ...
. She later became the regional council chair of Trades Union Congress Midlands.


Parliamentary career

Smith was elected as the MP for
Wolverhampton South West Wolverhampton South West is a constituency created in 1950 represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2019 by Stuart Anderson of the Conservative Party. It was represented by the Conservative Party for 47 years after its ...
at the 2017 general election, succeeding outgoing Labour MP
Rob Marris Robert Howard Marris (born 8 April 1955) is a British Labour Party politician, who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wolverhampton South West. He first held the seat from 2001 until his defeat in 2010. He regained at the seat at the ...
with an increased majority. She credited her victory to backing from
Unison In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or per ...
and
Momentum In Newtonian mechanics, momentum (more specifically linear momentum or translational momentum) is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. If is an object's mass ...
activists rather than her
Constituency Labour Party __NOTOC__ A constituency Labour Party (CLP) is an organisation of members of the British Labour Party who live in a particular parliamentary constituency. In England and Wales, CLP boundaries coincide with those for UK parliamentary constituenc ...
, who she said made her feel like "
cannon fodder Cannon fodder is an informal, derogatory term for combatants who are regarded or treated by government or military command as expendable in the face of enemy fire. The term is generally used in situations where combatants are forced to deliberatel ...
". Smith was the first British African-Caribbean person to represent a constituency in the West Midlands in the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...
, in a seat that was held for more than two decades by
Enoch Powell John Enoch Powell, (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950–1974) and was Minister of Health (1 ...
(but had also been held by
Paul Uppal Paul Singh Uppal (born 14 June 1967) is a Conservative Party politician from the United Kingdom. He was the Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South West from the 2010 general election to 2015. Uppal attempted to win the seat back at the ...
, a British Indian). Smith was a member of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. She was also the Co-chair of two All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs): one on obesity, and the other on adult social care. Smith commissioned an outside agency to produce a review into BAME blood, organ and stem cell donation. The review suggested some actions for the Government to take to increase the number of BAME donations. This led to the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary (
Department of Health and Social Care The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for government policy on health and adult social care matters in England, along with a few elements of the same matters which are not otherw ...
)
Jackie Doyle-Price Jacqueline Doyle-Price (born 5 August 1969) is a British Conservative Party politician and former civil servant. She was first elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Thurrock in the 2010 general election. In September 2022, she was app ...
agreeing to meet Smith. At the 2019 election, Smith lost her seat to the
Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...
candidate, Stuart Anderson.


Voting record

Smith never rebelled against her
party whip A whip is an official of a political party whose task is to ensure party discipline in a legislature. This means ensuring that members of the party vote according to the party platform, rather than according to their own individual ideology ...
on any vote in Parliament. While her constituency voted to leave the European Union, she generally voted for more EU integration, and consistently voted against reducing
central government A central government is the government that is a controlling power over a unitary state. Another distinct but sovereign political entity is a federal government, which may have distinct powers at various levels of government, authorized or dele ...
funding of
local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...
.


Black Country flag controversy

Shortly after her election to the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
, Smith was reported to have criticised the design of the
flag of the Black Country The Black Country flag is the flag of the Black Country region of England. It was registered with the Flag Institute as a regional flag in 2012. History The design was the winner of a competition run by the Black Country Living Museum in res ...
because of the association of locally-made chains with the
slave trade Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
, and to have suggested that the design of the flag be changed. On
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
, she denied calling the flag racist or calling for it to be banned, and in her Commons
maiden speech A maiden speech is the first speech given by a newly elected or appointed member of a legislature or parliament. Traditions surrounding maiden speeches vary from country to country. In many Westminster system governments, there is a convention th ...
, said that her comments "had been taken out of proportion", and that she had received "many abusive messages" over the issue. The flag had previously been described as "offensive and insensitive" in 2015 by Wolverhampton-born, London-based activist
Patrick Vernon Patrick Philip Vernon (born 1961)"Patrick Vernon"
, Sankofa 2013: Teachers' R ...
, who claimed that its chains were a "disturbing" image of an industry that profited from the
transatlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
and colonial rule in Africa. In 2018, a
UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest par ...
supporter from
Castlecroft Castlecroft is a suburb of Wolverhampton, West Midlands, located on the edge of the city, WSW of the city centre. It is situated where the Merry Hill, and Tettenhall Wightwick wards meet, and also borders South Staffordshire. History The na ...
(an area in Smith's constituency) was given a nine-week suspended prison sentence for sending racist and threatening emails to several MPs, including Smith, in which he told her to be put on "the first
banana boat Banana Boat is a Polish a cappella sextet, authoring and performing original songs representing the genre of neo-shanties. Being one of the pioneers of the new genre, the group retains its simultaneous focus on contemporary interpretations of ...
" to "the jungle clearing you came from". Both the prosecution and defence cited Smith's reported comments about the flag as having motivated the abusive emails.


Post-parliamentary life

During the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, Smith participated in a round-table event involving church leaders in
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
in response to comments the previous week saying uptake of the vaccine in some of the city's most vulnerable communities was as low as 50%. She said as a Christian, she would like to see strong interventions from church leaders, "When people are being misinformed on such a grand scale, churches need to step up. I am a Christian myself and I think they need to be clear. In my view they need to tell people it's OK to be vaccinated or it's a bit of a cop out". She also praised efforts in other faith communities, adding, "Many imams seem to be doing a good job in trying to get these messages out, we need to see the same". Smith said official efforts to dispel myths and reassure people needed to be stepped-up, "Historically black people have not always been listened to, or treated equally in terms of medical care, so there is a lack of trust sometimes. We need to deal with it and we need role models within the community".


Personal life

Smith's parents arrived in
Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
from
Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate). ...
in 1954 as part of the
Windrush generation British African-Caribbean people are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom. They are British citizens whose ancestry originates from the Caribbean or they are nationals of the Caribbean who reside in the UK. There are some self-identified Afro-C ...
. Smith is a
Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
.


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Eleanor 1957 births Living people UK MPs 2017–2019 Female members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies 21st-century British women politicians Black British women politicians Black British people in health professions Black British MPs