Candy Atherton - Career

Career

Atherton worked as a journalist from 1980.

She also worked with ex-offenders, co-wrote a book on housing for single homeless people in north London, and co-founded a refuge for battered women in West Sussex. She chaired the Women's and Disability Committees of both Islington and the Association of London Labour Authorities.

In 1982, she led protests within the Labour Party and the CND movement against the Task Force sent to the Falkland Islands. In 1984, she co-founded Everywoman magazine - a "post-feminist" women's magazine.

From 1986 to 1992, she served as a Labour councillor in the London Borough of Islington and was Mayor for the year 1989-1990. She went on to stand for Labour at Chesham and Amersham in the 1992 general election, increasing the Labour share by 18%.

In the mid 1990s, she left London and lived in Westbury, Wiltshire, where in 1993 she stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate in elections to Wiltshire County Council.

She worked for the Labour Party and UNISON before being selected to fight the three-way marginal seat of Falmouth and Camborne, after the local Labour Party had imposed the first all-women shortlist in the country. Such shortlists were subsequently ruled to be in breach of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, and thus unlawful. Despite that judgement, she remained in place as the candidate for the 1997 general election. Taking Labour from third place to first, she was elected Member of Parliament for Falmouth and Camborne, holding the seat until the election of 2005.

She doubled her majority in the 2001 election, having successfully campaigned for Objective One status for Cornwall, for the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, and for a university in Cornwall. She spearheaded the campaign to open a Minor Injuries Unit in Camborne Redruth Community Hospital - now used by more than 12,000 people a year - and the campaign to expose the nerve gas station at Nancekuke (RRH Portreath) in her constituency, an issue, surprisingly, that had been well known to the people of the area for several decades.

At the 2005 General Election, Atherton lost her seat to Liberal Democrat Julia Goldsworthy by a majority of 1,886. Goldsworthy was later accused of a dirty tricks campaign, as in her election literature she had published a photograph of Atherton looking rain-swept and dishevelled next to a photograph of herself looking smart, with the caption "Who do you want as your next MP?". A constituent accused Goldsworthy of turning the campaign into a beauty contest.

Paul Phillips, a gay aide Atherton employed for a year until March 2004, resigned and claimed discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, accusing her of homophobia and of asking him to find information on her Conservative opponent in Falmouth because he was also gay. The accusation of 'digging the dirt' was coined by the Tribunal Chair at the initial hearing and although Phillips denied that he had ever alleged this, the phrase stuck. Atherton denied having treated Phillips in any discriminatory way. The case was thrown out. Atherton's record of voting in the House of Commons was generally supportive of gay rights.