Alice Cullen
Alice Cullen | |
---|---|
![]() Portrait of Cullen from the National Portrait Gallery, London | |
Member of Parliament for Glasgow Gorbals | |
In office 30 September 1948 – 31 May 1969 | |
Preceded by | George Buchanan |
Succeeded by | Frank McElhone |
Personal details | |
Born | Alice McLaughlin 18 March 1891 |
Died | 31 May 1969 | (aged 78)
Political party | Labour |
Alice Cullen, JP (née McLaughlin; 18 March 1891 – 31 May 1969) was a Scottish Labour Party politician. She was the first female Roman Catholic Member of Parliament.
Early life
Educated at Lochwinnoch Elementary School, Cullen was a housewife, twice widowed, and married three times. She was a member of Glasgow Corporation from 1935 until 1945, and became a justice of the peace in 1941.[citation needed]
Political career
She was elected to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for the constituency of Glasgow Gorbals, which was safe for Labour, at a by-election in 1948.[1] She competed with three men to secure the position, which was vacated due to the resignation of the previous MP, George Buchanan, who assumed the position of Chairman of the National Assistance Board.[2]
She held the seat at subsequent general elections, until her death in 1969 at the age of 78. She was MP for Glasgow Gorbals at the time of "The Gorbals Vampire" incident in September 1954 when hundreds of schoolchildren went searching the Southern Necropolis cemetery armed with stakes to find a vampire with iron teeth.[3] She led the city council in blaming horror comics and films for the incident.[3] This resulted to a call for the ban of American horror comics to minors which she supported, along with all the other Glasgow MPs.[3]
A play loosely based on this incident, The Gorbals Vampire, was performed at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow in October 2016.
External links
- Centre for Advancement of Women in politics: Alice Cullen Archived 24 June 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages
References
- ^ "TheGlasgowStory: 1914 to 1950s: Personalities". www.theglasgowstory.com. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
- ^ ukvote100 (2 October 2015). "Alice Cullen's Election Victory of 1948". UK Vote 100: Looking forward to the centenary of Equal Franchise in 2028 in the UK Parliament. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ a b c Barker, Martin (1992). A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. p. 34. ISBN 0878055932.
- 1891 births
- 1969 deaths
- 20th-century Scottish women politicians
- 20th-century Scottish politicians
- Female members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Scottish constituencies
- Gorbals
- Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Glasgow constituencies
- Scottish justices of the peace
- Scottish Labour MPs
- Scottish Roman Catholics
- UK MPs 1945–1950
- UK MPs 1950–1951
- UK MPs 1951–1955
- UK MPs 1955–1959
- UK MPs 1959–1964
- UK MPs 1964–1966
- UK MPs 1966–1970
- Labour MP for Scotland stubs