Sara Parkin

Sara Parkin OBE (born 9 April 1946) started her working life as a nurse in Edinburgh but rose to prominence as a green political activist during and after the 1989 European elections, in which the UK Green Party gained 15% of the votes but no seats. She resigned from the party in 1992, at odds with the party’s anti-leadership stance, and went on to found the Forum for the Future with Jonathon Porritt and Paul Ekins. Her current campaigning focus is sustainability literacy as an essential outcome of formal education, especially in universities and colleges. She lives in Hackney, east London.

Sara Parkin was born in Aberdeen. She was educated in Coventry at Green Lane Primary School and Barr's Hill Grammar School. She then trained as a nurse at The Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (1970–74) where she met her husband Max, worked there as a ward sister, and her children Colin and Douglas were born. She tutored undergraduates in nursing at the University of Edinburgh (1972-3) and worked elsewhere in the health sector in the 1970s and 80s before turning to politics.

On moving to Leeds in 1976 Parkin discovered the Ecology Party (as the UK Green Party was then known). She stood (unsuccessfully) against Keith Joseph in the 1979 General Election and in several local elections. When her husband’s work as a cancer epidemiologist took the family to live in Lyon France, she became involved with the international growth of green politics. This including leading on the establishment of the Coordination of (European) Green Parties (a grouping now known as the European Green Party for which she acted as Co-secretary and Spokesperson until 1991. With activists in other European Green Parties she provided support for green-oriented parties around the world, including dissident movements in east Europe.

Parkin emerged as the most articulate and telegenic Green Party spokesperson after 1989 and was credited with being committed to Green Party policy and practical in terms of political tactics.Caroline Lucas remembers being “exhausted in the office and she’d burst through the door and bring with her new thoughts and ideas” while journalist Walter Schwartz considered her “the party’s best all-rounder, the easiest of the Greens to imagine as a Cabinet Minister. She is a highly organised political animal. Most Greens are not.”

After an exploratory approach by the Labour Party, Parkin was defeated in her attempt at the 1989 Green Party conference to secure agreement to open negotiations with other parties on an alliance to bring in a proportional election system.

...
Wikipedia