Ilkley MP wanted to change the world, but she didn't invent the internet!

The MP laughs with a mixture of bafflement and genuine amusement as she is forced to put the record straight on that particular red herring once again.

The bizarre claim – which appears on the Wikipedia website – says she came up with the idea of an interconnected network of computer systems that was used as a forerunner of the internet. The MP for Keighley and Ilkley has grown used to having to deny it.

“I’ve no idea where that has come from,” she laughs. “I certainly didn’t invent the internet.”

The strange entry was first pointed out to her earlier this year by puzzled staff at her constituency office in Keighley.

“I nearly died when they read it to me,” she remembers.

But, if she has never actually threatened to give Bill Gates a run for his money, she has, nevertheless, had a massive impact on the lives of some of her constituents, as well as people around the world.

In 1999 she became the first MP to raise the issue of forced marriage in the House of Commons and since then she has campaigned tirelessly for the rights of women.

Her report on so-called “crimes of honour” has been adopted by all 42 States of the Council of Europe, and has even been used to help in drawing up new human rights legislation in Turkey.

This year in Britain, regulations will come into effect which she hopes will finally end the “evil practice”of forced marriage in this country.

Not bad for someone who only became an MP in 1997 at the age of 57.

But Mrs Cryer’s comparatively late arrival into Westminster belies a lifetime of involvement in politics. Her husband, Bob Cryer, had been an MP for many years until his death in 1994.

The couple met at a Labour Party conference in Blackpool. By the age of 22, she was the youngster serving councillor in the country when she was elected to Darwen Council.

That she made her mark in politics so early in life is no surprise, given her background.

Her father was a member of the Independent Labour Party and a conscientious objector during the Second World War. And her grandmother, Dinah Place, was a suffragette and Independent Labour Party member.

“My dad told me about how they used their parlour to entertain the Pankhursts when they came on a campaigning visit,” she said. “They were very proud of it.”

“My grandmother saw success in her own lifetime – which was wonderful,” she adds. “She actually saw what she had been campaigning for come to fruition. I think she was extremely proud of the role she played.”

Her ability to play a part was helped no doubt by the fact that she only had one child: something that was unusual for the time.

Mrs Cryer’s maternal grandmother, on the other hand, had nine grandchildren.

“I think sometimes we can forget how much we have gained,” she says. “If you just look at the control of our fertility, it is wonderful what we have achieved. “ It was because of campaigners such as her grandmother that women were able to enter politics. And the young Ann was soon following in their footsteps. At the age of 18, she joined CND, a cause to which she remains committed.

In 1965, the Cryers moved with their children, John and Jane, to Oakworth in Keighley.

Bob Cryer was voted in as MP for Keighley in two elections and later went on to serve as MP for Bradford South.

He was killed in a car crash in 1994, a tragedy that left Mrs Cryer not only mourning the loss of a husband, but also suffering from post traumatic stress. She was in the car with her husband at the time of the accident and, although she escaped with bruising, the mental effects were harrowing.

“For a year I had recurring visions of the accident, especially if I was relaxed or watching television. Suddenly, instead of the television the accident would be there, with the shattering of glass and the car turning on to its roof.”

When she was asked to stand for nomination just a year later, she wouldn’t give an answer for a very long time because she was still so badly affected.

“My brain wasn’t working properly and I wasn’t functioning properly. Concentration was just so difficult,” she says.

It was only when her daughter warned her that saying no could lead to a lifetime of regret that she agreed to go ahead.

By the time she came to fight her first election two years later, she was supported by her second husband-to-be, Rev John Hammersley, who she had met on a tour of the new South Africa in 1995. Their plans to marry in 2001 were postponed when he was diagnosed with cancer. The wedding went ahead in 2003 – and a year later John was dead.

“He was so supportive, was John, about that initial election and getting into Parliament. He was just wonderful,” she remembers. “I couldn’t have had a more supportive partner.”

“His death was traumatic in a different way,” she says.

“The trauma over Bob was partly about his death and partly about being in that accident. When you are in a car and see the car turn over and see your husband dead in front of you it is very traumatic.

“John’s death was very traumatic in a different way. To witness him going though cancer for three years and then to be told there was nothing that could be done.”

John had undergone operations to have half his bowel removed, a kidney removed and two liver resections, before the hopeless news was given to the couple.

“When they said there was nothing more they could do, that was one of the most horrible days in my life.”

He was given a year to live but survived for only six months, during which time the couple took two holidays and he set about putting his affairs in order.

“He was a terribly optimistic person,” she remembers. “He would say there is a lot to be said for knowing when you are going to die.”

Despite having to cope with the loss of her second husband in November 2004 she went on to fight an election in 2005, defeating the leader of the BNP. It is a victory that was particularly sweet as she so vehemently opposes everything the BNP stands for.

“The BNP are awful,” she says. “They put this very respectable front on when they are on TV, or commenting to the press, but when they go out canvassing it is absolute rubbish that they come out with.”

She believes they play on the fear of the unknown which comes about because of a lack of community cohesion and integration.

“We lack a common language and we lack it because of the tradition of the Pakistani community in bringing in husbands and wives instead of marrying within the settled community,” she says.

She is convinced about the importance of immigrants learning the language of their adopted country.

She says: “I think about 80 per cent of Pakistani marriages are trans-continental. It means we have this on-going problem where English is not spoken in the home.”

Her outspoken but unfashionable opin-ions led to attempts to have her expelled from the Labour Party at the turn of the century.

“It was awful. It did hurt,” she admits.

Eight years on, she says we still haven’t moved any further forward.

“Keighley is full of people who come in as husbands and wives and are not speaking English,” she says.

But now, her once-controversial views have become mainstream, and there is now all-party support for moves to encourage the use of English among immigrants.

Her fight against forced marriage has been tireless, although her stance has brought criticism from some quarters. She has campaigned for the introduction of a lower age limit of 21 for both the bride and groom when one partner is coming into the country from overseas.

Those changes will come into effect later this year along with regulations that require anyone travelling abroad to marry to have to go personally to a register office in this country first.

“When we make it a requirement it will mean that girls can’t be magicked away to Pakistan and forced into a marriage, because they will have to personally go to the register office and tell them what they are doing,” she says.

Mrs Cryer, who says she has friends who were brought into the country as spouses at the age of 14, hopes the strict new laws could end forced marriages.

The MP, who has three grandchildren who are half-Indian and one who is half-African, has refused to give way to accusations of racism.

“If someone who means well criticises you, the way to shut them up is to call them a racist,” she says. “But if you don’t say things you don’t get things changed. I will criticise people for how they behave. I don’t criticise Pakistanis because they are Pakistani, I criticise parts of that community because of the way they treat women.

“If people have said ‘I won’t vote for you’, I say ‘tough’. For every male Pakistani who has voted against me there will be a female Pakistani who has voted for me.”

The many differences between the two main communities that make up her constituency – Ilkley and Keighley – don’t make her job any harder, but she says they can make it more interesting.

She says: “Two of my town-centre wards in Keighley are officially two of the most deprived wards in the country. The contrast with leafy Ilkley could not be more stark.

“But the beauty of having Ilkley in my constituency is that there are many people here who are professionals and who are dealing with many of the hot topics that I deal with.

“A lot of people in Ilkley are involved in churches and are involved in Third World issues. If there is something going wrong in far-flung parts of the world, I will get letters from people in Ilkley.

“It is really rewarding actually, because most people have constituents who are concerned about blocked drains or why the street isn’t being swept. It is so nice to have people who look at the global picture, at what is happening around the world and at what we can do to help.”

She concludes: “When I made that huge decision to run for Keighley I never thought in terms of personal ambition. I am not like that.

“But what I did want to do was to change the world. I wanted to change the world and to make it a better place for the most vulnerable.”