Roseanna Cunningham

Roseanna Cunningham MSP
Minister for Environment
Incumbent
Assumed office  12 February 2009
First Minister	Alex Salmond
Preceded by	Michael Russell
Member of the Scottish Parliament for Perth
Incumbent
Assumed office  6 May 1999
Preceded by	new constituency
Majority	2,495 (7.2%)
Member of Parliament for Perth Perth and Kinross (1995–1997)
In office 25 May 1995 – 7 June 2001
Preceded by	Nicholas Fairbairn
Succeeded by	Annabelle Ewing
Born	27 July 1951 (1951-07-27) (age 58) Glasgow, Scotland
Political party	Scottish National Party

Roseanna Cunningham (born 27 July 1951, Glasgow) is a Scottish politician, and member for the Scottish National Party for Perth in the Scottish Parliament.

Early life

Raised in Australia, she returned to Scotland and was a member of the left-wing 79 Group inside the Scottish National Party (SNP) in the early 1980s, but avoided expulsion as she was not a member of its steering committee (future SNP Convenor Alex Salmond by contrast who served on the 79 Group committee was expelled, whilst Margo MacDonald resigned from the party in protest before she could be expelled).

Cunningham worked as a solicitor and became an advocate in 1990.

Parliamentary career

Cunningham first came to prominence in 1995 when she won the bitter Perth and Kinross by-election to replace the Conservative MP, Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, who had died. She had initially been left off the SNP's candidate shortlist over her brief relationship in the 1970s with Donald Bain, the former husband of SNP stalwart Margaret Ewing, on the grounds that the issue could prove an embarrassment to the party. However, she was put back in contention following an intervention by the then party leader Alex Salmond, and after Ewing made clear she had no objection to Cunningham's candidature.

In 1999 she became the MSP for Perth and continues to represent the area in the Scottish Parliament to this day. In 2000 she was elected the SNP Senior Vice-Convener (deputy leader). Also in that year she helped establish the Scottish Left Review publication. She stood down as an MP in 2001, to concentrate on the Scottish Parliament.

John Swinney announced his resignation as leader of the SNP on 22 June 2004, and on the same day Roseanna Cunningham announced that she would be a candidate in the subsequent election for the party leadership. In the early stages of the campaign she appeared to be the clear front-runner, but the entirely unexpected decision of the popular former leader Alex Salmond to enter the race just before nominations closed changed everything, and Cunningham ultimately finished a distant second.

She is sometimes known as Republican Rose for her well-known support for the replacement of the monarchy with an elected head of state.

In December 2006 she led an unsuccessful attempt to prevent same-sex couples gaining the right to adopt children^[1], despite having previously been named ScotsGay Parliamentarian of the Year in 1998.^[2]

In August 2007 she voiced her disdain nationally about a video showing pupils from Glenalmond College, a co-educational independent boarding school in Scotland, acting out in a satirical video called "Class Wars"^[3] in which students dressed in the stereotypical attire of the Ned subculture are hunted by pupils dressed as Aristocrats. She is quoted as saying "I suppose this video could be billed as the revent of Monty Python's upper-class twits, Doubtless it is intended as humour and irony but it comes across as brash, crass and arrogant.".^[4]

In the first reshuffle of the SNP Government in February 2009, Cunningham was appointed as Minister for the Environment. ^[5]

References

External links

• Roseanna Cunningham MSP Biography at Scottish Parliament website
• Roseanna Cunningham MSP Biography at the SNP website

v • d • e      Members of the Scottish Parliament in the Mid Scotland and Fife region Elected in the 2007 election SNP (6 seats), Labour (5 seats), Conservative (3 seats), Lib Dems (2 seats) Constituency MSPs Helen Eadie (Lab, Dunfermline East) • Jim Tolson (Lib Dem, Dunfermline West) • Tricia Marwick (SNP, Fife Central) • Iain Smith (Lib Dem, Fife North East) • Marilyn Livingstone (Lab, Kirkcaldy) • John Swinney (SNP, North Tayside) • Keith Brown (SNP, Ochil) • Roseanna Cunningham (SNP, Perth) • Bruce Crawford (SNP, Stirling) Additional Members Claire Baker (Lab) • Ted Brocklebank (Con) • Murdo Fraser (Con) • Chris Harvie (SNP) • John Park (Lab) • Richard Simpson (Lab) • Elizabeth Smith (Con)