May Blood, appointed as working peer to House of Lords
May Blood, a Shankill Road community worker, is to become a new working peer to the House of Lords. She is one of three working peers from the North to be appointed as part of the British Prime Minister's plans to reform the hereditary system.
May Blood worked in a mill on the Springfield Road for 38 years and is a committed trade unionist. For the past ten years, she has been a community worker in the Shankill Road area and was a founding member of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition three years ago. She said that she would be sitting as an independent and would use her new position in the House of Lords to raise issues of concern to both communities.
The other appointments include the Ulster Unionist chairman Denis Rogan, who was involved in the controversy surrounding David Trimble's attendance at a funeral Mass in County Donegal for some of the Omagh bomb victims. He will be accompanied by a former Stormont MP, John Laird, who is a leading public relations consultant.
