Pro-lifers recognised in New Year honours

TWO PROMINENT pro-lifers are among the many Catholics to have been honoured in the New Year list.

Tory MP David Amess, who has successfully steered several pro-life amendments to abortion legislation through the House of Commons, has been knighted, while Professor Jack Scarisbrick, founder of the anti-abortion organisation, Life, has been awarded an MBE, for “services to vulnerable people”. The charity specialises in offering practical help to pregnant women.

Life’s Stuart Cowie said the honour was “long overdue”, adding: “From the outset he said that it was not enough to simply oppose abortion – one had to provide real, practical alternatives to it to make a difference.” 

Another prominent Catholic MP, Labour’s Anne McGuire, who has represented Stirling since 1997, has been made a dame. She has spent her Commons career campaigning for the rights of disabled people, and co-chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Disability Group. Others honoured include a 93-year-old Catholic teacher Catriona MacAskill, who has been given the British Empire Medal for services to the Gaelic language, while her daughter, Mairi O’Keefe, chief executive of Leuchie House in North Berwick, which provides respite care for people living with long-term disabilities, has been awarded an MBE – the first time a mother and daughter have been recognised in the same list.

Several other Catholic teachers from across Britain have been honoured, including Stephen Hill, a primary-school teacher who undertakes a major challenge each year and who, with his pupils, has raised more than £50,000 for charities. Mr Hill is deputy head of St Joseph’s Primary in Shaw in Oldham
Maura Regan, who leads the Carmel Education Trust in Darlington and is responsible for the education of around 3,000 pupils in two secondaries and four primaries, was awarded the OBE, as was Nicholas Hurn, executive headteacher of Cardinal Hume School in Gateshead and St Robert of Newminster in Sunderland. Maria Garside, headteacher of St Ambrose Barlow High School in Salford for the past eight years, was awarded the CBE.

A leading Catholic figure in the fight against homelessness, Mark McGreevy, chief executive of Depaul International, received an OBE, as did Glasgow City Council’s director of education, Maureen McKenna. Former police chief Kevin Hyland, who has worked with the Church against human trafficking, was also awarded an OBE.

Doreen Mooney, a parishioner at Christ the King Catholic Church in Kingstanding in Birmingham, was awarded an MBE for a community project set up in 2010.

And Maureen Murray, a former nurse who worked for the Children’s Society for 30 years, was given a MBE.