Tributes (Speaker Martin)

Joanna Cherry Excerpts

Tuesday 1st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I want to pay a brief tribute to Michael Martin as a symbol of the social mobility of a generation of the working class in the post-war years. My dad was born in a tenement in Maryhill, just next door to Springburn, and I know that their generation did not always have an easy time of it, facing prejudice and snobbery, particularly if they were of the Roman Catholic faith.

Mr Speaker, you said that Michael Martin was the first Roman Catholic to hold your great office of state since the Reformation. Catholics now regularly hold high office in Scotland and across the UK, but that was not always the case, and a significant degree of sectarian abuse from certain quarters is still directed towards those of us in public life who are from the Catholic tradition. Let me add my very personal and sincere thank you to Michael Martin for breaking through that particular glass ceiling. May he rest in peace.