18 Facts About Ann Cryer

Constance Ann Cryer JP is a British former politician who was the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Keighley from the 1997 general election up until she stood down at the 2010 general election.

Ann Cryer's father, Allen Place, was an activist in the Independent Labour Party, as was his mother, Dinah Place, a suffragette.

Ann Cryer was educated at St John's Primary School in Darwen and Spring Bank Secondary Modern School in the same town, before attending the Bolton Institute of Technology.

Ann Cryer began her career as a clerk for Imperial Chemical Industries in 1955, moving to the General Post Office as a telephonist 1960 to 1964.

Ann Cryer joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament when she was 18 and in 1961 became the youngest serving councillor in the country.

Ann Cryer was selected as the prospective Labour candidate for the Keighley constituency, the seat her husband had held, from an all-women shortlist.

Ann Cryer was elected to the House of Commons at the 1997 general election, defeating the sitting Conservative MP Gary Waller by 7,132 votes.

Ann Cryer was re-elected in the 2001 and 2005 general elections.

Ann Cryer voted against the government on many occasions and was a member of the left-wing Socialist Campaign Group during her time in parliament.

Ann Cryer voted with the government to increase detention without trial to 42 days for terror suspects.

On 21 August 2008, Cryer announced she would not contest the next general election, due to her health, energy levels and age.

In May 2012, Ann Cryer unsuccessfully stood as a candidate for the Ilkley ward of City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council.

Ann Cryer was interviewed in 2014 as part of The History of Parliament's oral history project.

Ann Cryer became a researcher in social history at the University of Essex in 1969 before becoming a full-time personal assistant to her husband when he entered parliament in 1974 until his death in a car accident on 12 April 1994.

Ann Cryer has a son and a daughter, and two stepchildren from her second marriage in 2003 to the Rev John Hammersley, who died a year later.

Ann Cryer is president of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway Society, having been a member with her first husband from its early days.

Ann Cryer became a Justice of the Peace in 1996 and a member of the Bradford Cathedral Council from 1999.

In December 2009, Ann Cryer was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bradford for services to the community from 1991, before and after becoming Keighley's MP.