FLOATING high up in the highest echelons of professional society, Vera Baird is a fine example of the accomplished career woman. A criminal and civil liberties barrister and QC in the London chambers of Michael Mansfield, she covers high-profile cases at the Old Bailey, is on a whacking salary and not someone who ever expects to lose an argument.

Having achieved all she can in law, Vera moved into politics and has been selected as the Labour Party candidate for Redcar, the Teesside coastal steel town known for its large Labour majority. The only thorn in her side could be seen to be the difficult task of taking over from hugely popular former MP and Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam- but even on that score, Vera has been given Mo's full blessing.

That's the enviable place she's at today. But she's come from a world that couldn't be more removed from her present position. Vera, 48, spent the first part of her life growing up in Oldham, a hard working-class industrial town near Manchester where unemployment was commonplace.Her family could never afford to send her on school trips and she lived in a house with no inside toilet for her first 18 years. Her family couldn't afford to buy a television until she was ten and they never owned a car.

Some days were tougher than others but to Vera, hard-living was the norm. Her family struggled like most of the neighbours to make ends meet and her father spent a large part of his life looking for work. Vera says she could easily have stayed in her parents' income bracket like so many did in Oldham. Indeed, her brother never wanted to go to university and works as a wages clerk in Greater Manchester.

But there was a turning point somewhere in Vera's life that left her determined to get on.

Some childhood memories stick in her mind more than others. One happens to be of her devastated father, Jack Thomas, telling his family he'd been given his marching orders from his work as a painter in a cotton mill despite never having done anything wrong. "At that time, employers were free to sack workers whenever they wanted," she says. "People like my father were treated as fodder. Until the contracts for employment acts came into being in the 1960s, the workforce was utterly vulnerable."

Her father died soon after her 11th birthday from pneumonia at the age of 55. Though he'd never been formally educated, he had always sought to improve himself and passed on his thirst for knowledge to his young daughter. "He may have been under-educated but he was an intelligent man. When he saw I had an interest, he'd encourage me to talk about issues that were important to me and gain knowledge through reading. He was an important influence in my education and politics," Vera says.

"And he was a socialist in a practical sense. When he won a bonus at work, he'd come and share it out amongst every family member. I remember him encouraging me with education and saying 'one day, you might become a manager's secretary!'"

Vera got into the town grammar school and, at 17, left home to read law at Newcastle and went to the bar at Northumbria University. It was while she was a student in the 1960s she got involved in politics and became the vice-president of her student union at a time when Jack Straw was the president of the National Union of Students; Stephen Byers, Hilary Armstrong and Mo Mowlam were her contemporaries in Newcastle and the decade was a time of fervent political activity.

Vera became more politicised during the miners' strike in the 1980s when she covered the biggest trial in the strike at Orgreave, near Sheffield, to expose police lies in cases against picketers. "That was when I realised I could use civil law politically," says Vera. The cases in Orgreave were pivotal and her interest in civil liberties became more evident in her job. She began to take on cases related to the infringement of civil liberties, always there to defend the under-dog.

After a dummy-run "apprentice seat" as a Parliamentary candidate in Berwick in 1983, Vera focused on being political through the courts and packed her bags for London and the bigger cases in 1986.

Being selected for the Redcar seat is an extension of the political commitment she's always shown in life. Redcar's dubious image as a raggy Northern town disturbs her and she wants to regenerate both its image by encouraging a sense of self-esteem and bring in industrial investment.

As a die-hard 1960s feminist, an issue close to her heart is women's opportunities in the workplace. She is conscious of the "juggling" game that women play to maintain a home and career and feels more "family friendly" provisions in the workplace need to be made to keep women from being over-burdened. She's set up a committee for women which meets regularly in Redcar and talks through local concerns for women.

Free education is a central political concern which carries emotional undertones for her. It was only through her early interest in books and free university education that she was able to escape the poverty trap she was born into. She is firmly in favour of abolishing tuition fees at university and believes students paying their own way at present is an interim solution. The money being ploughed into nurseries and primary schools by the Labour Government will gradually head upwards, she believes.

Taking a pay cut when she stops being a top-notch city barrister isn't an issue for her. She's done what she wanted to do in the courts. And, being no stranger to poverty, she says she is relaxed about money and can "live on next to nothing" if ever forced to.

And, while most political candidates would be daunted by the prospect of filling Mo Mowlam's hugely popular boots, Vera isn't cowed.

"Mo is a unique woman who has an amazing way of doing things but I'm not Mo and I wouldn't want to imitate her style. She's really pleased for me because she's been succeeded by a woman who's also a Northerner but we're both very different. I'm me and that's who I'm going to be if I win the seat," says Vera. "I do think there's a female style of politics - Mo's way was a woman's way. She's a particularly accessible individual who is warm and friendly and easy to connect with. I think women are better at communicating than men in general."

She says despite any "Middle England" image the Labour Party might have earned itself since Tony Blair appeared on the scene, it's a party that's there for the majority of working people. "What is great about the Government is that it doesn't close its eyes to working people who are striving for a better life."

Hearing Vera argue her case so persuasively, you could be forgiven for cynically regarding her words as the well-chosen phrases of a barrister who has mastered the art of winning people's minds. But meeting Vera face-to-face, you realise there's nothing rhetorical about her campaign talk. She's a strong Northern lass made good who doesn't mince her words. It's a case of "what you see is what you get".