Ann Black

Ann Black OBE is a member of the British Labour Party's National Executive Committee (NEC), who was Chair of the Labour Party from September 2009 to September 2010, and is part of the Grassroots Alliance group of NEC members.
As a constituency representative elected directly by individual members of the Labour Party, Ann Black reports back after every meeting of the NEC and the National Policy Forum by email.
She is from the soft left Labour Party pressure group Labour Reform and is a regular contributor to journals such as Chartist and more occasionally Socialist Campaign Group News. She is also a member of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform.
On 4 August 2006 she was re-elected to the National Executive Committee, as the highest polling candidate. She was first elected to the NEC in 2000 and also came top in the previous ballot in 2004.
In 2009 she was part of the three-strong disciplinary panel of senior NEC members, with Cath Speight and Sir Jeremy Beecham, for MPs referred for consideration over the parliamentary expenses scandal.
Previously she had held a number of positions in the Labour Party and also in her trade union, UNISON, since joining the ASTMS union (now part of Unite) in 1979 and Labour in 1982.
She is also currently Secretary of Oxford East Constituency Labour Party and vice chair of Unison's Regional Political Committee. She works as a computer programmer at Oxford Brookes University.
In September 2011 she contributed to the book What next for Labour?; her piece was entitled "In and Out of Power: A View from the Grass Roots".