Shirley Williams
Shirley Vivian Teresa Brittain Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby was a British politician and academic. Originally a Labour Party Member of Parliament, she served in the Labour cabinet from 1974 to 1979. She was one of the "Gang of Four" rebels who founded the Social Democratic Party in 1981 and, at the time of her retirement from politics, was a Liberal Democrat.
Williams was elected to the House of Commons for Hitchin in the 1964 general election. She served as minister for Education and Science from 1967 to 1969 and Minister of State for Home Affairs from 1969 to 1970. She served as Shadow Home Secretary from 1971 and 1973. In 1974, she became Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection in Harold Wilson's cabinet. When Wilson was succeeded by James Callaghan, she served as Secretary of State for Education and Science and Paymaster General from 1976 to 1979. She lost her seat to the Conservative Party at the 1979 general election.
In 1981, dismayed with the Labour Party's left-ward movement under Michael Foot, she was one of the "Gang of Four"—centrist Labour figures who formed the SDP. Williams won the 1981 Crosby by-election and became the first SDP member elected to Parliament, but she lost the seat in the 1983 general election. She served as President of the SDP from 1982 to 1987 and supported the SDP's merger with the Liberal Party that formed the Liberal Democrats.
Between 2001 and 2004, she served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords and, from 2007 to 2010, as Adviser on Nuclear Proliferation to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. She remained an active member of the House of Lords until announcing her retirement in January 2016, and was a Professor Emerita of Electoral Politics at Harvard Kennedy School at the time of her death at age 90, having been one of the last surviving members of the Labour governments of the 1970s.
Early life and education
Born on 27 July 1930 at 19 Glebe Place, Chelsea, London, Williams was the daughter of the political scientist and philosopher Sir George Catlin and the pacifist writer Vera Brittain. Williams's grandmother, Brittain's mother, was born in Aberystwyth, Wales. She was educated at various schools, including Mrs Spencer's School in Brechin Place, South Kensington; Christchurch Elementary School in Chelsea; Talbot Heath School in Bournemouth; and St Paul's Girls' School in London. During the Second World War, from 1940 to 1943, she was evacuated to St. Paul, Minnesota, in the United States, where she attended the all-girls' Summit School.While she was an undergraduate and an Open Scholar at Somerville College, Oxford, Williams was a member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society and toured the United States playing the role of Cordelia in an OUDS production of Shakespeare's King Lear directed by a young Tony Richardson. In 1950, she became chair of the Oxford University Labour Club, believing herself to be the first woman to hold the position though it has been shown that Betty Tate had chaired a session in 1934. After graduating as a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, politics and economics, Williams was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and studied American trade unionism at Columbia University in New York City for a master's degree, awarded by Oxford in 1954.
On returning to Britain, she began her career as a journalist, working firstly for the Daily Mirror and then for the Financial Times. In 1960, she became General Secretary of the Fabian Society, a role she held until 1964.
Parliamentary career
After unsuccessfully contesting the constituency of Harwich at the 1954 by-election and the general election the following year, as well as the constituency of Southampton Test at the 1959 general election, Williams was elected in the 1964 general election as Labour MP for the constituency of Hitchin in Hertfordshire. She retained the seat, renamed Hertford and Stevenage after boundary changes in 1974, until 1979. As Minister for Education and Science, Williams launched the first Women in Engineering Year in 1969.Her colleague David Owen recalled: "You'd watch her work a room at a local Labour event and she'd never start by smarming up to a regional leader or a councillor. She'd settle down next to somebody whom she'd have no political reason to talk to – a solid party worker – and you'd watch this person's face light up. This was always done spontaneously, without any ulterior motives. She just liked people and liked them to like her."
Between 1971 and 1973, she served as Shadow Home Secretary. In 1974, she became Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection in Harold Wilson's cabinet. When Wilson announced his resignation in 1976 and was succeeded by James Callaghan, she became Secretary of State for Education and Paymaster General, holding both cabinet positions at the same time. Williams stood for the Labour deputy leadership in October of that year but lost to Michael Foot.
Comprehensive schools
While serving as education secretary between 1976 and 1979, Williams pursued the policy introduced by Anthony Crosland in 1965 to introduce the comprehensive school system in place of grammar schools. Previously, in 1972, as her daughter Rebecca approached secondary school age, Williams had moved into the catchment area of the voluntary aided school Godolphin and Latymer School allowing her daughter to gain a place there. However, when Godolphin and Latymer School subsequently voted to go independent in 1977, Rebecca chose to leave that school and instead went to Camden School for Girls because it had chosen to go comprehensive.Europeanism
Always a passionately committed supporter of European integration, Williams was one of 68 Labour MPs to defy a three-line whip in the 28 October 1971 Commons vote on membership of the European Communities. Four years later, she was one of the leaders of the Britain in Europe campaign during the 1975 European Communities membership referendum. Labour's anti-Europeanism during the Michael Foot years was one of the factors that drove her to abandon the party in 1981.In her 2016 valedictory speech to the House of Lords before that year's second membership referendum, she described the UK's European Union membership as "the most central political question that this country has to answer" and said it was the reason for her retirement. In closing, she called on her colleagues to "think very hard before allowing the United Kingdom to withdraw from... its major duty to the world—the one it will encounter, and then deliver, through the European Union".
Social issues
A lifelong Roman Catholic, Williams was a longstanding opponent of the legalisation of abortion. She was one of the two female MPs to vote against the Abortion Act 1967, which legalised abortion. However, Lord Harries of Pentregarth reported that Williams "refused to sign up for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, and generally kept a low profile on the issue of abortion."On Thursday 21 June 2007 she appeared on Question Time to discuss Salman Rushdie being honoured. She was strongly opposed to the action.
Social Democratic Party
Williams lost her seat when the Labour Party was defeated at the 1979 general election. Her defeat came two years after her appearance and arrest on the Grunwick picket lines, for which she had been harshly criticised in the press. When, soon afterward, she was interviewed by Robin Day for the BBC's Decision 79 television coverage of the election results, both Norman St John-Stevas – the Conservative's Education Spokesman who had frequently clashed with her at the despatch box – and Merlyn Rees, the outgoing Home Secretary, paid tribute to her.Following the election, she hosted the BBC1 TV series Shirley Williams in Conversation, interviewing, in turn, a number of political figures, including former West German chancellor Willy Brandt, former Conservative prime minister Edward Heath and her recently deposed colleague James Callaghan. She later appeared on many television and radio discussion programmes in Britain – in particular, the BBC's Question Time, where her 58 appearances earned her a "Most Frequent Panellist" award. During this period, Williams remained a member of the National Executive of the Labour Party. From 1980 to 1981, she was Chairman of the Fabian Society.
In 1981, unhappy with the influence of the more left-wing members of the Labour Party, she resigned her membership to form – along with fellow Labour resignees Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers – the Social Democratic Party. They were joined by 28 other Labour MPs and one Conservative. Later that year, following the death of the Conservative MP Sir Graham Page, she won the Crosby by-election and became the first SDP member elected to Parliament. Two years later, however, having become the SDP's President, she lost the seat at the 1983 general election. At the 1987 general election, Williams stood for the SDP in Cambridge, but lost to the sitting Conservative candidate Robert Rhodes James. She then supported the SDP's merger with the Liberal Party that formed the Liberal Democrats.