Anne Kerr (politician)

Born Anne Patricia Bersey in Putney, into a Methodist family, she spent most of her childhood in west London, attending St Paul's Girls School. She was evacuated to Budleigh Salterton, Devon, during the war, and joined the WRNS. In 1944 she married James Doran Clark (subsequently TV and film scriptwriter James Doran) and in 1945 they had a son, Paddy. They were divorced in 1952. Before entering politics she was an actress and television interviewer, using the name Anne Doran. She was elected in Putney at the 1958 London County Council election as Anne Clark, and held her seat until the council was abolished in 1965. She was an ardent opponent of capital punishment, a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and was on the Committee of 100 set up by Bertrand Russell in 1960 to oppose nuclear weapons. She was married again in 1960 to fellow Labour politician Russell Kerr, who became MP for Feltham in 1966.

She won the Rochester and Chatham seat at the 1964 general election, defeating the sitting Conservative MP Julian Critchley with a majority of 1,013 votes.[1]

She defeated Critchley again at the 1966 general election, with an increased majority,[2] but lost by over 5,000 votes at the 1970 election to Conservative Peggy Fenner.[3]

Always passionately interested in human rights issues, Kerr was vocal in protesting against the executions of three black Rhodesians in 1968, the first since Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, placing a wreath of flowers outside the Rhodesian embassy in London on the day of the executions, on 6 March.[4] She attended the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago when she was detained and manhandled by police. She was also a staunch opponent of Britain's entry into Europe's Common Market, and after her 1970 defeat she was a founder of Women Against the Common Market.

She and her husband were also two of three British MPs who accompanied Gerry Fitt MP for West Belfast on the Civil Rights march in Derry on October 5th 1968, which is generally regarded as the starting point for the Troubles in Northern Ireland. [5]

Kerr died at her home at Twickenham of acute alcoholic poisoning. At her August 1973 inquest, her husband Russell Kerr, also a Labour Member of Parliament, said that she had never really recovered from being beaten by police at Chicago five years earlier.

• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Anne Kerr
• Portraits of Anne Kerr at the National Portrait Gallery, London