Alison Lowe

Alison Natalie Kay Lowe is a British Labour politician. Lowe was a Leeds City Councillor from 1990 to 2019, the first black woman to serve on the council, and has served as the Chief Executive of Touchstone, a mental health charity based in Leeds, since 2004.

Lowe's father came to Leeds from St Kitts in the West Indies in 1956, and her mother Kay was a Leeds-born white working-class woman of Irish descent who was evicted from her family home on becoming pregnant at the age of 20. Alison was one of four children.

Born in Leeds, Lowe grew up at 224 Dufton Approach in Seacroft, where her family was one of only two black families on the estate. She attended Parklands Girls High School. She married a train conductor at 20 and had her first child (writer and publisher Adam) at 21 and her second (Rosy) at 23. A conversation with a former teacher inspired her to seek to begin university. On 29 September 1987, three weeks after giving birth to her second child, she began a degree in history at the University of Leeds. She graduated with a BA thesis on Edward II of England entitled 'Homosexuality in the Middle Ages'. She went on to complete an MA in Medieval Studies at the university's Centre for Medieval Studies.

In 1990, Lowe was elected Labour councillor for Armley in Leeds, thus becoming Leeds's first black woman councillor.

After graduation, Lowe worked for a homeless charity called St Anne's, followed by Foundation Housing, housing ex-offenders. In 2004, she became CEO of the Yorkshire mental health charity, Touchstone.

In 1999, Lowe participated in the ITV fly-on-the-wall documentary Family Life. Lowe's engagement to her partner Steve Rothery was filmed and broadcast, but as of 2015 the marriage had still not taken place.

Lowe has several times been shortlisted to be the Labour Party's prospective parliamentary candidate, including:

• Leeds North-East for the 1997 general election, subsequently losing to Liz Davies.
• Leeds West for the 2010 general election, subsequently losing to Rachel Reeves. Reeves went on to win election to the House of Commons.
• Batley and Spen for the 2015 general election, subsequently losing to Jo Cox, who went on to be elected to the House of Commons.

In 2014, Lowe won the Forward Business Woman of the Year award. Noted as a supporter of gay rights, in 2015, Lowe was Stonewall Senior Champion of the Year.

After 29 years' continuous service, Lowe announced in 2018 that she would not seek re-election at the 2019 council election and would retire as a councillor.