Jean Mann

Jean Mann JP (née Stewart; 1889 – 21 March 1964) was a Scottish Labour Party politician and a campaigner for better housing and planning.

Early life

Mann was educated at Bellahouston Academy in Glasgow and became an accountant. Married with five children, she was a councillor on Glasgow Corporation from 1931 to 1938, where she served as Housing convenor. She became Vice President of the Scottish Branch of the Housing and Town Planning Association, and was a senior magistrate in Glasgow.

In September 1941, the Scottish Branch of the Housing and Town Planning Association organised a conference in Largs to draw attention to the Scottish evidence to the Barlow Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population (1940). The conference papers and proceedings were afterwards published in a book titled Replanning Scotland which was edited by Jean Mann.

She unsuccessfully contested the Renfrewshire West constituency at the 1931 general election and again in 1935.

Parliamentary career

In the Labour landslide at the 1945 general election, Mann was elected as Member of Parliament for Coatbridge.

After she had taken the oath, it was realised that her position on the Rent Tribunals under the Rent of Furnished Houses Control (Scotland) Act 1943 was remunerated and that she therefore might hold an 'office of profit under the Crown' which would disqualify her from election. A Select Committee was established which reported that her election was invalid; a Bill was rushed through validating it and indemnifying her from the consequences of acting as an MP while disqualified.

When the Coatbridge constituency was abolished for the 1950 general election, she was returned for the new Coatbridge and Airdrie constituency, holding the seat until she retired at the 1959 general election. Mann was a member of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee from 1953 to 1958.

Her memoir, Woman in Parliament, recalled the difficulties facing women MPs and their efforts to improve legislation for women and families.