Life After Death

appeal to human virtue in an area where it should be at its strongest. If we can get it right for women, we have a better chance of getting it right for the unborn child, but also for men and the whole of society. We can expect no respect or protection for life without respect and greater protection for women and mothers. We must work for a restoration of virtue - and stop being a pushover.

Charlie Colchester, Executive Director, CARE Pro-Life Pro-Love Travelling back and forth to the Liverpool maternity hospital last year, waiting anxiously for an overdue baby, could not fail to remind me of the frailty, delicacy and vulnerability of the unborn child. Six years ago, our second child, Padraig, waited until after the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, announced her resignation. I joked with the midwife that the baby would now think it safe to emerge - and three hours later he did. Last year James Andrew Christian waited for the formal Dissolution of Parliament - arriving 50 minutes after the end of the 1992-1997 Parliament, and of my own eighteen years membership of the British House of Commons. I have been involved in politics since my schooldays - cutting my teeth as a candidate in a school mock-election and collecting petitions against the 1967 Abortion Act. As a student in Liverpool I was a ward organiser in the 1970 General Election. Just before my finals, in 1972, I won an inner-city ward, Low Hill, which I represented at one level or another for twenty-five years. By 1974, I was a Parliamentary candidate, and in 1979 took the Edge Hill seat with a record swing, as the youngest - and shortest-lived MP: elected for just two and a half days before going off to fight the subsequent General Election. Half the local streets were still lit with gas lamps, and people often lived in wretched conditions.

Half the homes had no inside sanitation, running hot water or bathrooms.

Unemployment had reached shocking levels. It was no surprise when riots disfigured and engulfed the area two years later. In the City Council, as Deputy Leader and Housing Chairman, life often got rough. On one occasion, police arrived to pull a militant protester off me - his hands were around my throat! My house was daubed and once I had a brick thrown in my face. Racists picketed my offices on another occasion. But there were also the thousands of loyal and decent people whom I felt priviliged to represent and to serve.

The Defining Issue In Parliament, it was the pro-life cause which dominated my life. Meetings were regularly wrecked by intolerant opponents, my home was picketed and so were my surgeries. Unkown arsonists burnt out my constituency offices. In 1983, and again in 1993, my constituency was abolished by Boundary Commissioners - people who seem to have their own agendas, taking no notice of the 10,000 objections which were lodged. Meanwhile I knew it was time for the Liberal Democrats and I to go our separate ways when they passed a policy committing the party to abortion.