Margaret Beckett
Margaret Mary Beckett, Baroness Beckett, is a British politician who was a member of Parliament for more than 45 years, first from 1974 to 1979 and then from 1983 to 2024. A member of the Labour Party, she was the United Kingdom's first female foreign secretary, and served as a minister under Prime Ministers Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Beckett was Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1992 to 1994, and briefly Leader of the Opposition and acting Leader of the Labour Party following John Smith's death in 1994. A member of the Labour Party, she served as MP for Lincoln from 1974 to 1979, and for Derby South from 1983 to 2024. Her 45 years in the House of Commons makes her the female MP in the Commons with the longest service overall, and she was the last sitting MP who served in the Labour governments of the 1970s.
Beckett was first elected to Parliament at the October 1974 general election for Lincoln and held junior positions in the governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. She lost her seat at the 1979 general election, but returned to the Commons in 1983 as MP for Derby South. She was appointed to Neil Kinnock's shadow cabinet shortly afterwards; she was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1992, becoming the first woman to hold that role. When John Smith died in 1994, Beckett became the first woman to lead the Labour Party, though only in a temporary capacity—Blair won the election to replace Smith shortly afterward and assumed the substantive leadership.
After Labour returned to power in 1997, and as one of 101 female Labour MPs elected, Beckett became a member of Blair's Cabinet initially as President of the Board of Trade, the first female holder of that office. She later served as Leader of the House of Commons and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, before becoming Foreign Secretary in 2006, the first woman to hold that position, and—after Margaret Thatcher—the second woman to hold one of the Great Offices of State. Following Blair's resignation as prime minister in 2007, Beckett was not initially given a position by Brown, Blair's successor; after she had spent a period on the backbenches, Brown appointed her to his cabinet as Minister of State for Housing and Planning in 2008, before she left the government for the last time in 2009. After Labour lost power following the 2010 general election, she sat on the opposition backbenches until standing down at the 2024 general election. She was shortly thereafter appointed to the House of Lords.
Early life
Margaret Beckett was born Margaret Mary Jackson in 1943, in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, into the family of a disabled Congregationalist carpenter father and an Irish Catholic teacher mother. Her father died early, precipitating family poverty. She had two sisters, one later a nun, the other later a doctor and mother of three. She was educated at the Notre Dame High School for Girls in Norwich, then at University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where she took a degree in metallurgy.Beckett was an active member of the Students' Union and served on its council. In 1961, she joined Associated Electrical Industries as a student apprentice in metallurgy. She also joined the Transport and General Workers Union in 1964. In 1966, she joined the University of Manchester as an experiment officer in its metallurgy department, and in 1970 went to work for the Labour Party as a researcher in industrial policy.
Member of Parliament
In 1973, Beckett was selected as Labour candidate for Lincoln, which the party wanted to win back from ex-Labour MP Dick Taverne, who had won the Lincoln by-election in March 1973 standing as the Democratic Labour candidate. At the February 1974 UK general election, Beckett lost to Taverne by 1,297 votes. Following the election, she worked as a researcher for Judith Hart, the Minister for Overseas Development at the Foreign Office. Harold Wilson called the October 1974 general election, and Beckett again stood against Taverne in Lincoln. This time Beckett became the MP, with a majority of 984 votes. Almost immediately following her election she was appointed as Judith Hart's Parliamentary private secretary. Harold Wilson made her a Whip in 1975, promoted to Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Education and Science, replacing Joan Lestor, who had resigned in protest over spending cuts.Beckett remained in that position until she lost her seat at the 1979 general election. The Conservative candidate Kenneth Carlisle narrowly won the seat with a 602-vote majority, the first time the Conservatives had won at Lincoln since 1935. She joined Granada Television as a researcher in 1979. Out of Parliament, and now known as Margaret Beckett after her marriage, she was elected to Labour's National Executive Committee in 1980, and supported the left-winger Tony Benn in the 1981 Labour deputy leadership election narrowly won by Denis Healey. She was the subject of a vociferous attack by Joan Lestor at the conference. Beckett was selected to stand at the 1983 general election as the Labour candidate in the parliamentary constituency of Derby South following the retirement of the sitting MP, Walter Johnson. At the election she retained the seat with a small majority of 421 votes. In March 2022, Beckett announced she would end her parliamentary career, standing down as MP for Derby South at the next general election.
Shadow Cabinet and Deputy Leader, 1984–1994
Upon returning to the House of Commons, Beckett gradually moved away from the left, supporting incumbent leader Neil Kinnock against Benn in 1988. By this time she was a front bencher, as a spokeswoman on Social Security since 1984, becoming a member of the shadow cabinet in 1989 as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Following the 1992 general election she was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and served under John Smith as Shadow Leader of the House of Commons. She became a Member of the Privy Council in 1993. She was the first woman to serve as deputy leader of the Labour Party.Following the sudden death of John Smith from a heart attack on 12 May 1994, Beckett became Acting Leader of the Labour Party, the party's constitution providing for the automatic succession of the deputy leader for the remainder of the leadership term, upon the death or resignation of an incumbent leader in opposition. In times when the party is in opposition, party leaders are subject to annual reelection at the time of the annual party conference; accordingly, Beckett was constitutionally entitled to remain in office as acting leader until the 1994 Conference; however, the party's National Executive Committee rapidly decided to bring forward the election for Labour Leader and Deputy Leader to July 1994.
Beckett decided to run for the position of Labour Leader, but came last in 1994 leadership election, behind Tony Blair and John Prescott. The deputy leadership was contested at the same time; Beckett was also defeated in this contest, coming second behind Prescott. Though she failed in both contests, she was retained in the shadow cabinet by Blair as Shadow Health Secretary.
A footnote to her ten-week tenure as caretaker leader of the Labour Party is that she was the leader at the time of the 1994 European Parliament election, which were held four weeks after she assumed the position. Labour's election campaign had been long in the planning under Smith, whose sudden death led to a "sympathy rise" in opinion polls for Labour, compounding what had already been a strong lead over the Conservatives. Consequently, Labour had a commanding victory in what was its best result in any of the eight European elections held since 1979. The two Labour leadership elections followed six weeks later on 21 July 1994 and the Labour electorate did not appear to attribute any credit for the successful European election result to Beckett's chance-ordained position as acting leader in the four weeks immediately prior to the election.
Under Blair's leadership, Beckett was the Shadow Secretary of State for Health, and then from 1995 the Shadow President of the Board of Trade. She was one of the leading critics of the government when the Scott Report published its findings into the Arms-to-Iraq scandal in 1996. In 2025 Labour Party deputy leadership election, Beckett recalled that being deputy leader was a "ghastly job".
In government, 1997–2001
The Labour Party was elected to government in a landslide in the 1997 general election and Beckett held a number of senior positions in the Blair government. Following the election she was appointed President of the Board of Trade ; the first woman to have held the post. She was succeeded by Peter Mandelson in July 1998.Beckett was then Leader of the House of Commons from 1998 until her replacement by Robin Cook in June 2001. Her tenure saw the introduction of Westminster Hall debates, which are debates held in a small chamber near Westminster Hall on topics of interest to individual MPs, committee reports, and other matters that would not ordinarily be debated in the Commons chamber. Debates that take place in Westminster Hall are often more consensual and informal, and can address the concerns of backbenchers. She received admiration for her work as Leader of the House, working on this and a number of other elements of the Labour government's modernisation agenda for Parliament. In 2000, she expressed republican sympathies.
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2001–2006
Following the 2001 general election, Beckett became Secretary of State at the new Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, created after the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was abolished in the wake of perceived mismanagement of the foot-and-mouth epidemic in 2001. The new department also incorporated some of the functions of the former Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.Beckett rejected demands for an expansion of nuclear power from a lobby including energy minister Brian Wilson and Downing Street staff. She argued there was no need for new nuclear for at least 15 years given current energy prices and generation capacity. The 2003 energy white paper stated that "the current economics of nuclear power make it unattractive" and there were no proposals for new nuclear power stations.
Beckett held the position of Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs until May 2006, when she was succeeded by David Miliband. Beckett was on the front line of the government's efforts to tackle climate change, and attended international conferences on the matter. In a report published on 29 March 2007 by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, she was criticised for her role in the failures of the Rural Payments Agency when she had been Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.