Jill Evans - Political Career

Political Career

Evans has long been a political activist and community campaigner before being elected to public office. Her political credits include

• participation in August 1981 in the first leg of the march from Cardiff City Hall which led to Greenham Common,
• the campaign against the nuclear bomb-making factory in Llanisien, Cardiff,
• supported miners and their families during the 1984-1985 miners' strike; she was the first woman to go down Maerdy colliery,
• leading the successful closure of the infamous Nant Y Gwyddon landfill site in Gelli,
• active support of the Friction Dynamics workers in Caernarfon,
• supporting the Burberry workers in their 2006-2007 campaign to prevent the closure of their Treorchy factory; she secured the support of international Welsh baritone, Bryn Terfel and led the picketing of the flagship Burberry store in London.

Her party posts include national Chair of Plaid Cymru from 1994 to 1996. She is a long-standing supporter and member of the European Free Alliance (EFA), the pan-European grouping of Plaid Cymru's sister parties, which campaigns for independence for the historic nations of Europe and linguistic rights for minority languages.

She was elected to Rhondda Borough Council in 1992, Mid-Glamorgan County Council in 1993, and, following the abolition of these, to the Rhondda Cynon Taf Council in 1996. She was elected to the European Parliament at the 1999 elections, becoming the first Plaid Cymru MEP. Evans was re-elected at the 2004 elections and again in June 2009. She stood for the Rhondda constituency in the National Assembly for Wales election, 2007 and came second with votes.

In her first parliamentary term, Evans was vice president of the Women's Rights & Equal Opportunities Committee, a member of the Environment Committee and the Palestinian Delegation. She is currently the President of the European Free Alliance (EFA) group of MEPs and First Vice President of the Green/EFA Group in the European Parliament. Her main political interests are the environment and international affairs.

On 4 November 2011 she was fined £575 after refusing to pay her TV licence fee in protest over changes to the Welsh-language channel S4C.