Anne Kerr

Who was Anne Kerr?

Anne Patricia Kerr was a British Labour Party politician who was elected for two successive terms as a Member of Parliament. Before entering politics she was an actress and television interviewer.

She won the Rochester and Chatham seat at the 1964 general election, defeating the sitting Conservative MP Julian Critchley with a majority of 1,013 votes.

She defeated Critchley again at the 1966 general election, with an increased majority, but lost by over 5,000 votes at the 1970 election to Conservative Peggy Fenner.

Always passionately interested in human rights issues, Kerr was vocal in protesting against the executions of three black Rhodesians in 1968, the first in the unrecognized country since independence, placing a wreath of flowers outside the Rhodesian embassy in London on the day of the executions, on 6 March. She attended the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago when she was detained and manhandled by police. She was also a staunch opponent of Britain's entry into Europe's Common Market, and after her 1970 defeat she was a founder of Women Against the Common Market.

Kerr died at her home at Twickenham of acute alcoholic poisoning. At her August 1973 inquest, her husband Russell Kerr, also a Labour Member of Parliament, said that she had never really recovered from being beaten by police at Chicago five years earlier.