Ann Noreen Widdecombe is a British politician and television personality. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Maidstone and The Weald, and the former Maidstone constituency, from 1987 to 2010 and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South West England from 2019 to 2020. Originally a member of the Conservative Party, she was a member of the Brexit Party from 2019 until it was renamed Reform UK in 2021; she rejoined Reform UK in 2023.
The 1997 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 1 May 1997. The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister John Major was defeated in a landslide by the Labour Party led by Tony Blair, achieving a 179-seat majority.
Steven John Norris is a British Conservative Party politician and businessman. Norris served as Member of Parliament for Oxford East from 1983 to 1987. After narrowly losing that marginal seat in 1987 he re-entered the House of Commons at a by-election for Epping Forest in 1988, which he held until stepping down to focus on his business career in 1997. He was subsequently chosen by Conservative Party members to be the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London in 2000 and 2004 in which he secured 42% and 45% respectively, coming second to Ken Livingstone but ahead of the Conservative Party's vote share for the Greater London Assembly.
Crispin Jeremy Rupert Blunt is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Reigate since 1997. Formerly a member of the Conservative Party, he was the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Prisons and Youth Justice within the Ministry of Justice from 2010 to 2012 and Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee from 2015 until 2017.
Peter Gary Tatchell is an Australian-born British human rights campaigner, best known for his work with LGBTQI+ social movements.
Sir Simon Henry Ward Hughes is a British former politician. He is now the Chancellor of London South Bank University, an external adviser to The Open University, and a strategic adviser to Talgo, a Spanish manufacturer of trains. Hughes was deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2010 to 2014, and from 2013 until 2015 was Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Bermondsey and Old Southwark from 1983 until 2015. He declined a position in the House of Lords in 2015.
Stephen Twigg is a British Labour Co-op politician who has served as the 8th Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association since August 2020. He served as Member of Parliament for Enfield Southgate from 1997 to 2005, and for Liverpool West Derby from 2010 to 2019.
David Stanley Borrow is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for South Ribble from 1997 to 2010. He is currently a Labour Party councillor on Preston City Council and was appointed Mayor of Preston on 15 May 2019.
Shaun Anthony Woodward is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 2007 to 2010.
Nicolas John Gibb is a British politician who served as Minister of State for Schools from 2010 to 2012; 2014 to 2021 and from 2022 to 2023. He has served at the Department for Education under Conservative Prime Ministers David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. A member of the Conservative Party, Gibb has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton since 1997. He announced that he was standing down at the next election in 2023.
Joan Christabel Jill Knight, Baroness Knight of Collingtree, was a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, she served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Edgbaston from 1966 to 1997. She was created a life peer as "Baroness Knight of Collingtree, of Collingtree in the County of Northamptonshire" in 1997 after she had stood down at that year's general election, and retired from the House of Lords on 24 March 2016.
OutRage! was a British political group focused on lesbian and gay rights. Founded in 1990, the organisation ran for 21 years until 2011. It described itself as "a broad based group of queers committed to radical, non-violent direct action and civil disobedience" and was formed to advocate that lesbian, gay and bisexual people have the same rights as heterosexual people, to end homophobia and to affirm the right of queer people to their "sexual freedom, choice and self-determination".
The Islamic Party of Britain is a defunct political party in the United Kingdom that was active from its formation in 1989 until 2006. The IPB was opposed to both capitalism and communism. David Musa Pidcock, a Sheffield man who converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam while working as an engineer in Saudi Arabia, founded and led the party. The IPB published a quarterly magazine entitled Common Sense.
The 2001 Conservative Party leadership election was held after the party failed to make inroads into the Labour government's lead in the 2001 general election. Party leader William Hague resigned, and a leadership contest was called under new rules Hague had introduced. Five candidates came forward: Michael Ancram, David Davis, Kenneth Clarke, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Portillo.
A by-election was held in the Bermondsey constituency in South London, on 24 February 1983, following the resignation of Labour MP Bob Mellish. Peter Tatchell stood as the candidate for the Labour Party, and Simon Hughes stood for the Liberal Party. Following a bitter campaign, the Liberals made huge gains and took the seat, with a majority of votes cast. Labour's vote fell from 63.6 per cent in May 1979 to 26.1 per cent as Tatchell came a distant second, while the Conservative candidate, Robert Hughes, managed only fourth place, losing his deposit. With a swing of 44.2%, the 1983 Bermondsey by-election remains the largest by-election swing in British political history.
Chris Morris is an activist who, with Euan Sutherland, successfully challenged the British Government in the European Court of Human Rights and secured an equal age of consent for sexual activity between males. He went on to study psychology and work as a political speechwriter and consultant.
Michael Russell Brown is a British political journalist, noted as a former Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) from 1979 to 1997.
The Sexual Offences Act 1967 is an act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It legalised homosexual acts in England and Wales, on the condition that they were consensual, in private and between two men who had attained the age of 21. The law was extended to Scotland by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980 and to Northern Ireland by the Homosexual Offences Order 1982.
Section 28 or Clause 28 was a legislative designation for a series of laws across Britain that prohibited the "promotion of homosexuality" by local authorities. Introduced by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, it was in effect from 1988 to 2000 in Scotland and from 1988 to 2003 in England and Wales. It caused many organisations such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender student support groups to close, limit their activities or self-censor.
The Portillo moment was the declaration of the result for the Enfield Southgate constituency in the 1997 general election, at around 3:10am on 2 May 1997. The Labour Party candidate Stephen Twigg defeated the sitting MP, Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo. The result was perceived as a pivotal indication that the Conservatives would be voted out of office after 18 years, and that Labour would win the election by a substantial majority.
