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Tracing her early political engagement,
Christine Grahame was initially drawn to animal welfare issues
rather than party politics, but her involvement with the SNP
started in 1969 when, at the age of 25, she first voted for the
party and joined soon after. However, she did not immediately get
"onto a soapbox" or even distribute leaflets: her involvement
comprised making scones and toffee apples (which were famous but
which she recognises would perhaps not go down quite so well
nowadays in case they rotted peoples' teeth) and even making a cat
hot water bottle cover "which should now be on the Antiques
Roadshow - a collectors item".
First elected MSP in 1999, Christine is
a very active parliamentarian, currently championing her private
members Control of Dogs (Scotland) Bill, and convening the Health
and Sport Committee. As Convener of this Committee, Christine is
therefore involved in the consideration of the Alcohol Etc
(Scotland) Bill which includes the proposal to introduce minimum
pricing per unit of alcohol. Although admitting that she had
initially been opposed to the idea herself when it was first raised
over three years ago, thinking that it would penalise the poor and
"pensioners just buying a bottle of sherry", she now is fully
convinced of the need for a minimum pricing strategy, based on the
strong evidence she has seen: "I've not changed my mind because the
Cabinet Secretary for Health has jumped on top of me and hit me
over the head with a bottle of beer." She makes the point that not
only are goods price sensitive, but that price affects the way in
which we view our consumption of a product: "If you buy two bottles
of wine that are £3 each, you'll drink that £3 bottle of wine a lot
differently from a bottle you've paid £10 for, because you'll say
'I'm not using that, that cost ten pounds, I'll keep that for a
special occasion or a dinner'; so it affects your consumption as
well as your attitude to it." What is perhaps more important for
Christine, though, is the degree of support that medical
professionals have given to the policy.
Voted Free Spirit of the Year in 2007
at the Scottish Politician of the Year Awards, Christine does not
shy away from voicing her opinion on issues, and this was
particularly apparent in 2009 with her views on the compassionate
release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and the Lockerbie conviction.
Having initially been unconvinced that the Crown had proved its
case against al-Megrahi, she now goes beyond that, believing that
he is innocent. Recognising the pain of the bereaved families, she
is very clear that her intention is not to denigrate their loss;
rather, she is committed to uncovering the truth in what she claims
has thus far been a "politically smelly" case. She believes that
the guilty verdict against al-Megrahi suited the US Government, but
cites the Iranian passenger plane shot down by the US Navy 5 months
prior to the Lockerbie disaster killing Iranian pilgrims, many of
them children: "Now who felt sorry for the Iranians, where was the
big scandal? None, so are Iranian lives worth less than American
lives? Palestinians worth less than Israelis? Of course they're
not." She lodged a motion in the Parliament calling for an inquiry
into the Lockerbie disaster, and requesting that the relationship
between that atrocity and the shooting down of the Iranian aircraft
be considered in the course of such an inquiry.
This case is symptomatic of Christine's
worldview in relation to injustice in the world. The values
Christine places a high premium on in politics are social justice,
kindness and fairness, and these are attributes that should
transcend religious boundaries, she argues. She is an atheist, but
the role that all religious denominations and faith traditions in
Scotland can play in the political dialogue is, she believes, an
important one, even if she does not necessarily agree with what
they are saying: "I very much like churches getting involved. If
they're not going to get involved on an apolitical basis, or
political with a small p; then I don't know what they're
about."
Although divorced after a long
marriage, Christine describes her boys as having had a very stable
family life for 25 years, which is not, she regrets, the case for
many children in Scotland. The recent inquiry by the Health &
Sport Committee into mental health and wellbeing of children and
adolescents led her and her committee colleagues to hear evidence
of children as young as eighteen months old visibly suffering from
mental wellbeing issues, often as a result of poor parenting and
chaotic family circumstances. She then went on to describe a visit
to a drop-in centre for adolescents who self-harmed, which would
"break your heart": "youngsters with their whole lives ahead of
them". However, she did praise the people working with these young
people as something positive to come from the visit which was
otherwise "pretty depressing."
Although a very active Parliamentarian,
when there is some time to unwind, Christine enjoys cooking (fish
pie being a speciality that she enjoyed making over the Christmas
recess). However, the cooking and preparation of food extends
beyond only for her own consumption. Christine has two cats to
cater for, who also seem appreciative of Christine's keen interest
in birds, although she is careful to make sure that the food she
prepares for the birds is hanging high out of the cats' reach!
Having started to feed some birds outside her house, she now has
her regulars, who have become "seed connoisseurs" and occupy a
holly tree which she has named the 'singing tree', in which they
all congregate and, after feeding, they "stagger back into my holly
tree and as night-time falls, they all have a big row about who's
on which twig- it's a bit like being in the Cabinet I suppose,
who's the most important Cabinet minister!" This fascination with
nature, coupled with a strong opposition to animal cruelty has
proved to be an enduring passion in Christine's life. She is still
an active supporter of the SSPCA and RSPB, and currently
championing her Private Members' Bill on the Control of Dogs. Her
Bill, which is making its way through the legislative process,
focuses on the owners not the dogs. Earlier in January, she
discovered a Staffordshire Bull Terrier clawing at a neighbour's
door at 3am, a "lovely wee beast" which she believed may have been
dumped there. She stayed up with it, stroking it while it was
crying, but eventually had to call the police as it remained
unclaimed. This type of care for animals illustrates the strength
of feeling Christine has for the issue, and her ardent belief of
the need for legislative change to remove the effects of the
Dangerous Dogs Act, which she describes as a "complete waste of
time".
Not a career politician, Christine was
a secondary school English teacher and a civil court lawyer for 12
years respectively before she became an elected MSP. However, both
previous jobs have stood her in good stead for her role as an MSP,
and have "common threads" of "interference" and vocation running
through them. She attributes her ability to speak from notes - she
rarely writes a speech verbatim - from her court days, where she
also learnt to think quickly on her feet; although she advises "in
life always have a B plan, just in case what you're proposing isn't
liked. Don't give them it first, but have it at the back."
Similarly, teaching has equipped her to be able to speak to a room,
but make each person feel like they are the only one being spoken
to. Nonetheless, she maintains: "becoming a politician per say has
been an evolution - I never went on a training course."