Nina Temple | |
|---|---|
| General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain | |
| In office January 1990 – November 1991 | |
| Preceded by | Gordon McLennan |
| Succeeded by | Post abolished |
| General Secretary of the Young Communist League | |
| In office 1979–1983 | |
| Preceded by | Tom Bell |
| Succeeded by | Douglas Chalmers |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Nina Claire Temple 21 April 1956 Westminster, London, England |
| Political party | Communist Party of Great Britain |
| Other political affiliations | Democratic Left |
| Relatives |
|
| Alma mater | Imperial College, London |
Nina Claire Temple (born 21 April 1956)[1] is a British politician who was the last Secretary[2] of the Communist Party of Great Britain and was formerly a think-tank director in the United Kingdom.
Temple was born in Westminster, London, the daughter of Barbara J. (Rainnie) and Landon Roy Temple. Born into a communist family (her father ran Progressive Tours and was a Communist Party of Great Britain member),[2] she joined the Young Communist League when she was 13, later protesting in London against the Vietnam War.[3] She has a degree in materials science from Imperial College, London.[3][4] She is the sister of film director Julien Temple and the aunt of actress Juno Temple.[5]
During the late 1970s she was general secretary of the Young Communist League and became a prominent member of the Eurocommunist faction within the party. She became a member of the CPGB executive in 1979, and then a member of the Political Committee in January 1982.[6]
She was the Press and Publicity Officer of the CPGB from January 1983 until 1989,[7] when she became the last general secretary of the party in January 1990, aged 33.[3] She pledged to make the party "feminist and green, as well as democratically socialist."[8] In this role Temple became one of the leading proponents of the dissolution of the CPGB in November 1991, and the founding of its legal successor, the Democratic Left,[9][10] proclaiming that "The internationalism of the 1990s will be as much informed by Greenpeace and Oxfam, as communism once was by Marx and Engels".[11]
The Democratic Left continued through the 1990s, becoming the New Politics Network in 1999. Temple was its first director[9] and worked for five years for the Make Votes Count Coalition.[12]
In June 2005 she started work as head of development and communications at the Social Market Foundation, a role she held until 2008.[4]
Temple has two children with a schoolteacher, a daughter born in 1987 and a son born in 1988.[3]
Temple became ill with Parkinson's disease in 2000.[4] She trained in counselling at the Gestalt Centre in Old Street, and in September 2003 founded Sing For Joy, a choir of people with chronic degenerative diseases.[4][13][14]