Karen Whitefield (born 8 January 1970,

Bellshill Bellshill (pronounced "Bells hill") is a town in North Lanarkshire in Scotland, southeast of Glasgow city centre and west of Edinburgh. Other nearby localities are Motherwell to the south, Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Hamilton to the south ...

) is a

Scottish Labour Scottish Labour ( gd, Pàrtaidh Làbarach na h-Alba, sco, Scots Labour Pairty; officially the Scottish Labour Party) is a social democratic political party in Scotland. It is an autonomous section of the UK Labour Party. From their peak of ...

politician. She was the

Member of the Scottish Parliament Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP; gd, Ball Pàrlamaid na h-Alba, BPA; sco, Memmer o the Scots Pairliament, MSP) is the title given to any one of the 129 individuals elected to serve in the Scottish Parliament. Electoral system The ad ...

(MSP) for the Airdrie and Shotts constituency from

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

Political career

Prior to her election as MSP, she worked as a personal assistant to

Rachel Squire Rachel Anne Squire (13 July 1954 – 5 January 2006) was a British Labour politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Dunfermline West in Scotland from 1992 general election to 2005, and then for Dunfermline and West Fife from 2005 ...

MP.

MSP for Airdrie and Shotts: 1999–2011

She was elected as MSP for Airdrie and Shotts at the 1999 Scottish Parliament general election. As an MSP, she chaired the Parliament's Education Committee, where she used her casting vote to reject the student graduate endowment bill, a

Scottish National Party The Scottish National Party (SNP; sco, Scots National Pairty, gd, Pàrtaidh Nàiseanta na h-Alba ) is a Scottish nationalist and social democratic political party in Scotland. The SNP supports and campaigns for Scottish independence from ...

(SNP) flagship policy. It had the backing of the Liberal Democrats and SNP members, but not the

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

members of the committee. The bill was eventually passed through the Scottish Parliament by a vote of 67 to 61. Whitefield was Scottish Labour's shadow Minister for Children in the Scottish Parliament, and Convener of the Cross-Party Group on Diabetes under Iain Gray. At the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, she lost her seat to the SNP's Alex Neil, one of nine Labour MSPs to lose their constituency seats after holding them since the first elections to the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

Falkirk PPC: 2015

Following the resignation of sitting MP

Eric Joyce Eric Stuart Joyce (born 13 October 1960) is a British politician, former military officer and convicted child sex offender. A former member of the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Falkirk (UK Parliament const ...

(and the controversial and flawed

2013 Labour Party Falkirk candidate selection In 2013, Eric Joyce, member of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom for Falkirk, resigned from the Labour Party and announced he would not seek reelection. The process of nominating a replacement candidate for the 2015 general election ...

), in a re-run in which all the previous candidates were excluded on 8 December 2013, Whitefield was selected to contest the Falkirk constituency at the

2015 UK general election The 2015 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 7 May 2015 to elect 650 members to the House of Commons. It was the first and only general election held at the end of a Parliament under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. Local ...

. In the event, the SNP landslide swept Scotland, including Falkirk, and Whitehead was unsuccessful in being elected.

Labour Leadership 2021 campaign

Following the resignation of Scottish Labour leader

Richard Leonard Richard Leonard (born January 1962) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2017 to 2021. He has been a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP), as one of the additional members for the Central Scotland r ...

, Whitefield chaired

Anas Sarwar Anas Sarwar (born 14 March 1983) is a Scottish politician who has served as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party since 2021. He has been a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Glasgow region since 2016, having been Member of Parliame ...

's leadership campaign. Sarwar was subsequently voted in as leader of Scottish Labour.

Personal life

After her unseating in the

2011 Scottish Parliament election The 2011 Scottish Parliament election was held on Thursday, 5 May 2011 to Members of the 4th Scottish Parliament, elect 129 members to the Scottish Parliament. The election delivered the first majority government since the opening of Holyrood, ...

, she subsequently became a campaign officer at

USDAW The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw) is a trade union in the United Kingdom, consisting of around 360,000 members. Usdaw members work in a variety of occupations and industries including: shopworkers, factory and warehouse wo ...

. She is single and lives in the village of Glenmavis - a satellite village of Airdrie.

References

External links

*
Karen Whitefield
profile at the site of Scottish Labour 1970 births Living people People from Bellshill Labour MSPs Members of the Scottish Parliament 1999–2003 Members of the Scottish Parliament 2003–2007 Members of the Scottish Parliament 2007–2011 Female members of the Scottish Parliament 20th-century Scottish women politicians Politicians from North Lanarkshire {{MSP-stub