Politics
She was elected as a councillor to the Staffordshire County Council in 1981 and to the East Staffordshire District Council in 1991, becoming its mayor in 1996. She was also elected to the Uttoxeter Town Council in 1995. She stepped down from all three councils on her election to Westminster.
Dean was selected to stand for election for Labour through an all-women shortlist. She was elected to the House of Commons in the 1997 General Election, winning Burton from the sitting Conservative MP, Ivan Lawrence, by 6,330 votes. She made her maiden speech on 30 July 1997. In parliament she was a member of the Catering Select Committee from her election until 2005. She was a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee from 1999, and since the 2005 General Election she has also been a member of the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen.
She was a loyal backbencher although rebelling against the privatisation of air traffic control in 2000, a local issue given the proximity of her constituency to the East Midlands Airport. She was the chairperson of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Lupus – an issue close to her heart, as both her mother and husband died from it.
On 20 June 2007, Dean announced her intention to stand down at the next general election.
Read more about this topic: Janet Dean
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are “up to a point.””
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
“The politics of the exile are fever,
revenge, daydream,
theater of the aging convalescent.
You wait in the wings and rehearse.
You wait and wait.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)