Rosalind Mitchell (born 2 August 1954) is a writer and former British politician. In September 1997, while a serving member of Bristol City Council, she announced her intention to transition from

male to female A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and som ...

. She was the first British politician to do so while holding elected office, according to

Christine Burns Christine Burns (born February 1954) is a British political activist best known for her work with Press for ChangeBatty, David (31 July 2004). Mistaken identity. ''The Guardian'' and, more recently, as an internationally recognised health adv ...

Press For Change Press for Change (PFC) is a UK-based campaign group focusing on the rights and treatment of trans people. Its stated aim is "seeking respect and equality for all trans people in the UK". The group led the campaign for full legal recognition for ...

Early life and education

She was born in 1954 as David Spry in Barrow-in-Furness. Her parents were Moira Spry (''née'' Storey) (1924–2016), a typist, and Harry Spry (1921–1977), a shipyard draughtsman. She grew up on the Wirral Peninsula where her family moved when she was a year old, and in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire where she attended Stanborough School. After graduating in physics from the University of Liverpool she was briefly a physics and maths teacher before joining the specialist printers Harlands of Hull as a trainee analyst/programmer. In the 1980s she was a senior systems analyst with the Chase Manhattan Bank in London working on projects related to the financial

Big Bang The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the ...

, later becoming a freelance consultant specialising in databases and

expert system In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if� ...

s. In 1992 she completed a part-time degree in literature and philosophy with the Open University.

Political activity

She joined the Labour Party in 1982. In 1990 she successfully contested the Kelfield ward on

Kensington and Chelsea Council Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council is the local authority for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London. Kensington and Chel ...

, serving until 1994 when she moved to Bristol. In 1995 she stood unsuccessfully for the Stockwood ward on Bristol City Council, and 1997 she fought and won the Redland seat in the city.

Transition

In September 1997 she sought the support of the pressure group

with the intention of coming out publicly as Transsexual. An interview with Clare Dyer, of The Guardian was arranged and this was published on 22 September 1997. In the interview she revealed to the public that she was already undergoing hormone therapy and was about to start her formal transition. She was the subject of a BBC West documentary, ''New Labour, New Woman'', produced by Linda Orr and narrated by

Michael Lund Michael Lund is a journalist based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. He was the winner in the 2004 Queensland Media Awards for his report on the pitch invasion at the 2003 Rugby World Cup. He was also "highly commended" in the Walkley Awards fo ...

. It was first shown regionally on 19 March 1998 and repeated nationally in a slightly edited form on

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...

in the Home Ground series on 7 July 1998. Although she served successfully as Chair of the Development Control (Central Area) Committee and vice-chair of the Children's Homes Subcommittee and Lay Review Panel, she was controversial amongst her party colleagues and was denied admission to a meeting of the Bristol West constituency party Women's Section. Retrieved 27 June 2018

Personal life

After retiring from IT she worked for four years supporting people with mental health issues through organic market gardening. Since 2015 she has lived in Scotland where she writes crime fiction, takes photographs, and in 2021 she was working for an MLitt in Film and TV Studies at the University of Glasgow. She has been a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

since 1982 and is an active member of the

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 ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitchell, Rosalind 1954 births Living people English LGBTQ politicians British transgender writers British transgender women Labour Party (UK) politicians Transgender women writers Transgender women politicians People from Barrow-in-Furness Scottish National Party politicians British Quakers Schoolteachers from Cumbria Councillors in Bristol Councillors in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Alumni of the Open University Alumni of the University of Liverpool 20th-century British women politicians Women councillors in England English transgender politicians