Pauline Green

She started her career as a secretary with a wallpaper manufacturers, before joining the Metropolitan Police on her 21st birthday.

She later said that it was working on the beat and witnessing first hand the cycle of those caught in poverty turning to crime that turned her into a socialist.

Dame Pauline Green, (born 8 December 1948) is a former Labour and Co-operative Member of the European Parliament and former Leader of the Parliamentary Group of the Party of European Socialists (PES).

Green was born Pauline Wiltshire in Gżira on the island of Malta to an English soldier serving with the Royal Artillery and his Maltese sweetheart in 1948.

The family moved between Malta, Egypt and Germany, following Green's father wherever he was stationed.

As a result, Green spent "a lot of [her] very young days in army barracks" and "missed out on secondary and further education".

Following her father's return to civilian life, the family moved to Kilburn in London when Green was aged fourteen, and – acquiescing to her father's wishes that she did something "safe and steady" – Green studied for an Ordinary National Diploma in business studies.

In 1971, she was working in the West Hampstead division when she met and married PC Paul Green, resigning from the force in 1974 five months before the birth of her first child.

She spent two years between 1982 and 1984 as a lecturer at Barnet College of Further Education, before becoming an assistant teacher at a Special Educational Unit.

In 1985, she left her teaching career to become Parliamentary Advisor on European Affairs to the Co-operative Union, a position which she left in 1989 as her political career began.

Due to the changing political landscape, Green found that her job increasingly saw her lobbying to Brussels, with her particular interest being a directive backed by the co-operative movement creating common standards for food hygiene across Europe.

During this period Green was increasing active in local politics, becoming secretary and then chair of the Chipping Barnet Labour Party, before standing in (and losing) the elections for a seat on the area's council in 1986.

In June 1989, she announced her intention to stand for a seat in the European elections to help ensure the adoption of the draft directive.

She visited "most of the 65 local branches" of the constituency of London North and won the seat with a majority of 5,387.

Green was elected Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party (EPLP) in 1993, beating incumbent leader Glyn Ford.

She only served for one year, however, after having been chosen and championed by then Labour leader John Smith to become the new leader of the Parliamentary Group of the PES.

She was re-elected to the seat in 1994 with a majority of 48,348.

At the 1994 Party Leaders' Conference in Corfu, a "package deal" was agreed to fill the upcoming political posts, and it was agreed that Green would take the leadership post with strong backing from the Labour contingent.

Green was strongly involved in the fight against Apartheid in South Africa.

Ian White, an MEP elected at the same time as Green, said: "Although the parliamentary group formally elected Pauline, the "deal" was put together by the national party leaders. I believe that, had it been an open election, she would have won in any case, hands down, on competence alone."

She held the position for five years (1994–99), and was involved at senior levels of policy making in the European Union and member governments.

As leader of the Parliamentary Group of the PES, she had a central role in the controversy surrounding the failure to discharge the European Commission (EC)'s 1996 budget, bringing the first motion of censure against the commission but voting against it.

She then changed her position following corruption allegations raised by EC official Paul van Buitenen to call for Jacques Santer (then President of the European Commission) to react promptly or be sacked.

However, the parliamentary budget committee decided that it could not fulfill this duty with regard to the 1996 budget until points concerning the reduction of fraud in the transport system had been clarified.

For six months, the debate raged, with Green initially supporting the campaign to discharge the budget (whilst calling for more radical change), but only after a group of specialists that included two senior Socialist MEPs announced that there had been a slight improvement.

Parties from the centre and the right began to claim that the PES were only supporting their own members, and ultimately the move to discharge the budget was defeated.

In 1998 there were rumours that she would stand to be Labour's candidate for Mayor of London.

Green lost the leadership of the PES in 1999, which was attributed in part to her handling of the incident.

Following her re-election as an MEP in 1999, Green announced that she was retiring from politics to take up a position as the first female Chief Executive of Co-operatives UK, a position that she held until 2009.

Her work with the organisation included sitting on and responding to the recommendations of the Co-operative Commission, facilitating the organisation's merger with the Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM) and working to "secure and celebrate" the Co-operative Advantage.

Paul Green went on to become Chief Superintendent Green, borough commander for Brent, and was awarded the Queen's Police Medal in the 1999 New Year's Honours before retiring in 2000.

Whilst she expressed an interest in the position, she maintained that she would not be able to commit to the position until after the 1999 leadership elections because of her European commitments.

Green was seen as a strong advocate of EU parliamentary and institutional reform: she was vocal in her criticisms of any hint of impropriety, for example calling ex-commissioner Martin Bangemann's appointment to Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica "sleaze soaked" for the impression it gave that he had used his position in the EC for his own advantage – even though he had broken no rules.

However, her own final year as leader saw its own controversy with allegations of corruption against the EC.

One of the Parliament's duties was to discharge the budget, confirming that the year's spending had been in line with the plans originally set by the EC and that the money had been spent honestly and efficiently.

In the 2003 New Year Honours Green was appointed as a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) while also holding the office of the President of ICA Europe until her election as President of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) in November 2009.

As with her appointment to Co-operatives UK, she is the first female president in the organisation's history.

He and Green divorced in 2003.

Whilst staying at home to look after her two children (a son and a daughter), Green studied for a degree from the Open University.

She then spent two full-time years studying at the LSE for an MSc (Econ) in Comparative Government.