General Elections

Caroline O’Reilly – Prospective Peace Party Candidate for Brighton Kemp Town

Caroline, 58, is a lecturer in Modern Languages at an adult education college where she is chair of the work branch of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education. She is married to Edmund, they have three grown-up children and they are established residents in Kemp Town. Caroline has been an active member of Amnesty International for over 20 years. She is keen to promote justice in Israel/Palestine and last year visited theWest Bank to support local villagers in their protest against the annexation of their land. She is a supporter of the international peace movement against the recent wars onAfghanistan and Iraq. “I feel,” she says, “that no British government should be in a position to go to war ever again.”

John Morris – Prospective Peace Party Candidate for Guildford

John, aged 65, was born and brought up in Surrey. Seventeen years ago he moved to live and work inGuildford. He is a geography graduate with a post-graduate certificate in education. He is married to Phyl and has two children, one of whom, Carol, was on the list of Peace Party candidates for the 2004 European Parliamentary Elections. He has two grandchildren.

John spent his working life in education, first as a secondary schoolmaster, then as an examination administrator and, before retiring, as a lecturer and administrator in adult education. To keep his hand in, he teaches geology at a Summer School in Wiltshire.

John is a member of the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers. He serves as Clerk and Trustee of the local Meeting and has served recently as local Treasurer and represented the area Meeting on the Council of Quaker Peace and Social Responsibility. He is a member of the pacifist Peace Pledge Union, serves as a Trustee for the Peace Research and Education Trust and represents the Trust on the national Peace Education Network. He is a member of Surrey Peace Action Network, of which he is now Treasurer, and CND. He helped set up the Surrey Stop the War Coalition and served for a while as its Chair.

Besides his passion for a truly peaceful, just world, John has a deep concern for all aspects of the environment. He has particular interests in the atmosphere and its workings and in geology and the landscape. He is Chair of the nation-wide Climatological Observers Link and also the Guildford Branch of the Geographical Association. Two or three times a month he may be seen in a porter’s uniform on the Mid-Hants Railway.

He helped establish the Peace Party (originally under the name of the Pacifist Party) in 1995 and later became its national organiser. John has contested two Westminster Parliamentary elections inGuildford for the Peace Party in 1997 and 2001 and, with eight others, for the European Parliamentary Elections in 2004. He has also contested local elections on many occasions in Dunstable, Tunbridge Wells andGuildford. He was election agent for a parliamentary candidate in Tunbridge Wells.

Results

Caroline O'Reilly stood in Brighton Kemptown against nine other candidates, polled 172 votes (0.4% of the poll) and came sixth out of ten.

John Morris stood for the third time in Guildford against six other candidates and polled 166 votes (0.3% of the poll) and came six out of seven. The Party vote had been squeezed by tactical voting in a marginal situation and with the intervention of a Green candidate for the first time.