Pauline Pearce

Pearce came to prominence during the 2011 England riots, featuring in a viral video in which she chastised rioters, leading her to be dubbed the Heroine of Hackney.

[3] Pearce joined the Queen Mary Theatre and worked as a cleaner and care worker before launching into a jazz singing career, which included a show at the Edinburgh Fringe.

[1] Pearce was diagnosed with breast cancer and had multiple rounds of treatment requiring her to carry a walking stick.

She was filmed close to a riot on Clarence Road in Lower Clapton, furiously chastising looters over their criminal behaviour.

[12] Pearce was hailed as a heroine for helping to ease tensions in Hackney; her influence was acknowledged by politicians[19][20] and the national press.

[25] MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, commented that his deceased mother would have been devastated by the riots and would have reacted in a similar manner to Pearce.

[28] A fortnight after the event, Pearce took BBC London News reporter Paraic O'Brien on a tour of the recovering community.

[14] Speaking to The Australian newspaper, Pearce described the looting and vandalism as being "heart-breaking" and also contrasted people's relative poverty with expenditure for the Olympic Games.

[31] In September 2011, Pearce featured in The Spectator, dismissing David Starkey's view that hip-hop culture was partly to blame for the riots.

[7][36] Despite coming from a staunchly Labour family, and not having voted in the previous three elections, Pearce joined the Liberal Democrats in 2012.

[40] At the party's conference in Autumn 2016, Pearce proposed a motion to commit the Liberal Democrats against nationalism, racism and the far-right.

[46] Her campaign prioritised her opposition to Brexit and tackling knife crime, for which she proposed a Violence Reduction Unit modelled on that in Scotland.