As part of our Meet Your MPs series, The National has teamed up with Freight Books to publish extracts from We Are The 56

BORN in Bellshill in 1987, Angela Crawley grew up in Hillhouse, where poverty and deprivation were a fact of life. “I don’t remember my childhood being totally defined [by poverty],” she remarked, “although I do remember that my family would sometimes struggle to put food on the table.”

At school, by the end of fourth year, most of her fellow classmates did not stay on to study their Highers, and going to university was rare. Yet Angela was convinced that education would enable her to succeed in life, and she became set on getting a degree. Angela was eventually accepted to study politics at the University of Stirling. Despite not feeling like a very political person, politics seemed the obvious choice for Angela because the prevailing memory of inequality from her childhood had left her with deep questions about the society around her; by understanding the system, she might be able to answer those questions.

During her first year at Stirling, Angela became immersed in political campaigns. Her university bedroom was plastered with posters of campaigns against the student endowment fee put in place by the Lib-Lab Scottish Executive at the time. This was also a period of political awakening for Angela and she started to shift her allegiance towards the SNP before finally joining the party at the end of her first year. “Although I studied politics, I didn’t want to necessarily go into politics once I graduated,” she said.

After finishing university Angela wanted to travel and she secured employment with an educational travel company. She spent time in both mainland Europe and the United States “expanding her horizons” while trying to find out exactly what she wanted to do in the future.

On returning to Scotland, the opportunity to work in the Scottish Parliament was too much to turn down for a politics graduate: she worked for Bruce Crawford and then Clare Adamson, and following the 2011 Scottish Elections, Angela became more and more involved with the SNP and politics in Scotland. Through being so heavily involved in the 2011 elections campaigning around Lanarkshire, Angela became a natural candidate for council elections in Hamilton, but this was never the plan: “I didn’t ever see myself becoming a politician … but it was people like Clare Adamson and Bruce Crawford encouraging me to stand for councillor that convinced me to do it.”

Standing for the council election and fighting against three incumbent councillors was a daunting task for Angela. However she was elected on the first ballot with over 20 per cent of the vote, beating both the Labour and Conservative parties. “Being elected to council was probably one of the best experiences of my life,” she later said on being elected. The SNP failed to make enough gains on the council and instead they remained in opposition to a Labour minority administration in South Lanarkshire.

Failure to capture the council did not stop Angela’s – or the SNP’s – belief that as the referendum approached there was a real chance that the area could vote Yes. Instead, South Lanarkshire delivered a resounding No vote, motivating Angela to stand for Westminster. “I have campaigned most of my life against things that Westminster represents,” she said. “But when we lost the referendum I thought, ‘if we’ve got to be part of Westminster then I want to work actively to get the best deal for Scotland.’”

The next move was simple as Angela decided to seek election for the seat of Lanark and Hamilton East, standing for the SNP. The election ahead turned out to be gruelling, but it was the story of Winnie Ewing, who had captured part of her constituency in the famous Hamilton by-election many years before, that kept pushing her forward. “When I was on the doorsteps it was amazing how many people still remember that election. Winnie Ewing really was a trailblazer for so many women in the SNP and I was definitely inspired by that.”

Much like Ewing, her task in the election would seem insurmountable. Angela was up against the Labour incumbent Jimmy Hood who, with a majority of over 13,000, had been elected as an MP in 1987, only eight days after she was born. Yet on election night, Angela achieved the seemingly unthinkable and took the seat with a majority of 10,100 votes. Her younger brother, who on the night had been sampling ballot boxes and knew the likelihood of the result, leapt in the air to celebrate when the election result was announced. “We took our message beyond our sphere,” she said of the campaign. “We weren’t just talking to ourselves and we offered a positive message of hope to the people of Scotland.”

Following in the footsteps of her political hero, Angela caused an early storm at Westminster speaking more times in the House of Commons in 10 weeks than her predecessor had done in his last five years in Parliament. Her maiden speech, echoing the achievements of late Scottish political champions Charles Kennedy and Margo MacDonald, alongside promising to stand up for her constituents, was widely praised.

It was her final words that left her mark on the chamber, much like Winnie Ewing had done many years before. “Let us, this term, make history. Let us collaborate and work together to represent with compassion, aspirational ideals and progressive politics,” she said.

“The people of Scotland voted loudly and clearly for an alternative to austerity. My team of 55 colleagues and I will work tirelessly with those on the opposition benches to ensure that we see an alternative to the damaging cuts to our public services.”