Early Life
Vera Baird was born in Chadderton, near Oldham, Lancashire, the daughter of Jack Thomas, a maintenance painter in a cotton mill, who died when she was 10-years-old, and Alice Marsland, a print worker. Her paternal grandfather was a Welsh miner and her maternal grandparents were cotton mill workers. She went to Yew Tree County Primary School and the local authority-run Chadderton Grammar School for Girls (later renamed The Radclyffe School) and was then at Newcastle Polytechnic where she studied Law, gaining an LLB. Whilst there she founded and edited a Student Newspaper, "Polygon" and a year later was elected Vice President of the Polytechnic Union. In 1983 she gained a BA in Literature and Modern History at the Open University. In 1983 she became a legal associate of the Royal Town Planning Institute. She completed the first year of an MA in modern history at London Guildhall University from 1999 before transferring to University of Teesside on being selected for Redcar. She is currently studying for an MPhil (History) at the University of Teesside.
She was the part-time Parish Council clerk of Shadforth parish council in County Durham in the late 1970s when she lived in the County Durham village of Ludworth. Baird joined the Labour Party in 1971 and later joined the TGWU, now UNITE. She is now also a member of UNISON and of the GMB Trade Unions and a member of the Co-operative Party.
She was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1975 and first practised in the North East, setting up Collingwood Chambers in Newcastle upon Tyne, with other young barristers, shortly after she finished her pupilage and becoming its Head of Chambers for some years.
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