About Gerry

 

 

 

The Orkney and Shetland Constituency Labour Party have chosen Gerry McGarvey to represent them in May’s General Election. 

 

52 year old Gerry is a parliamentary researcher to Labour’s Dame Anne McGuire MP.   

Gerry was born in Falkirk where his father worked for BP at their refinery in Grangemouth and comes from a family steeped in Labour politics.

 

He is the great nephew of the former General Secretary of the Boilermaker’s Union and President of Trades Union Congress, Danny McGarvey.   

 

Gerry studied Theology and Philosophy at the University of Kent at Canterbury, but then went on to work in Liverpool 8 in the aftermath of the Toxteth riots of 1982. He stayed in Liverpool until 1988 before moving to Sunderland to help unemployed and disadvantaged adults look for a way to improve their lives.

 

By 1992 Gerry was in Edinburgh and became more active in party politics and he went back into education, gaining a post-Graduate Qualification in Community Education from Moray House. He also spent time in New Orleans where he gained a diploma in Community Development & Problem Management.  Gerry also dived straight back into the deep end of Community Engagement when he was in Edinburgh, where, as a trained counsellor he worked with the North Edinburgh Drug Advice Centre, Support and Addiction for Families in Edinburgh and The Rock Trust, a charity for 16-25 year old young single homeless.

 

Gerry met his wife Karen, originally from the Isle of Lewis, in Edinburgh before taking up work in Stirling with the AberlourChildcare Trust where he worked in a project for young people and families with chaotic lifestyles. About 8 years ago Gerry and Karen moved to Gartmore, a small village in rural Stirlingshire where they still live today.  

 

Gerry has been an active Trade Unionist, especially in organising and representing workers in small voluntary organisations and is also involved in the Co-operative Movement. Gerry completed the cycle that began at the kitchen table of his childhood home when he took up a job with Labour MP Anne McGuire, where he works as a parliamentary researcher and has pounded the streets at every election since 1992 taking the Labour message into communities. From the values he saw in his father and uncle, Gerry is proud to be standing as a Labour MP in Orkney and Shetland where he hopes to unseat Alistair Carmichael and bring an end to 51 years of Liberal representation in the constituency.