My tribute to Shirley Williams

Shirley Williams, latterly Baroness Williams of Crosby, passed away yesterday.

Shirley, Education Secretary from 1976-79 and Minister of State for Education & Science from 1967-69 (she held other posts, but these are the two where her impact was the most significant), was most famous for being one of the Gang of Four who founded the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981, alongside Roy Jenkins, David Owen, and Bill Rodgers. The daughter of political philosopher George Catlin and the famous writer Vera Britten (who incidentally was born in Newcastle under Lyme, not far from Keele University where I obtained my master's degree), Shirley first became a Labour MP in 1964 for Hitchin, which at the time included Stevenage as well as the entirety of the current North Hertfordshire district in which I live, and her moderate style suited the constituency very well indeed. Her brief time as Labour MP for Hertford & Stevenage marks the only time my hometown of Ware, along with its larger neighbour, Hertford has ever had a Labour MP. (Hertford and Ware became part of the rock-solid Conservative seat of Hertford & Stortford in 1983, where they remain today; in a direct nod to Shirley's moderate stance, the SDP only missed out on winning Stevenage by 1,582 votes in 1983) During her brief tenure in Hertford & Stevenage, Shirley pushed through an expansion of comprehensive education to replace elitist grammar schools as much as possible, a move marred by her decision to enrol her daughter in a school that later chose to become an elite private school, not to mention cuts to education funding and greater centralisation of education by successive governments.

After losing her seat in 1979, she famously won Crosby, one of the safest Conservative seats north of the Mersey, in a 1981 by-election for the SDP, compensating for Roy Jenkins' narrow failure in Warrington earlier that year. This spectacular win combined with her determination to break the mould of politics culminated in the SDP-Liberal Alliance leading in the polls for months, although after the Falklands War the SDP-Liberal Alliance lost momentum and eventually came third in 1983, despite Labour losing so many voters. Shirley herself lost Crosby that year by 3,401 votes. She made a permanent mark on the seat, though: Labour eventually gained it in 1997 (even that year they did not expect to win Crosby), helped by the gradual desertion of Conservative voters in Merseyside, and both it and its successor, Sefton Central, have been in Labour hands ever since. 

Her most significant impact on politics, apart from wedging a large crack in the two-party system, was helping more women in politics push to the forefront and above the parapet. Both of these indirectly paved the way for breakthroughs by the Green Party, starting from the 1989 European elections, and for more people with protected characteristics rising to prominence in politics.

So farewell, Shirley Williams. You may have been a Labour MP and later a Liberal Democrat peer, but you have left an imprint for progressive politics in general that will always be remembered across the political spectrum.

Shirley Vivienne Teresa Britten Williams, born 27 July 1930, departed this life on 12 April 2021, aged 90 years.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of the Swedish general election of 2022

The Swedish general election of 2022 generated some surprising results, despite also averting pollsters' predictions significantly. The last three years in particular proved to be a rough ride for the Social Democrat led governments of Stefan Lofven and Magdalena Andersson respectively. Although Sweden's laxer approach to the COVID-19 pandemic (compared to most countries in Europe, which imposed lockdowns during much of 2020 and 2021, an approach that arguably caused more problems than it solved) proved effective, Mr Lofven's desire to lift the austerity tax (which only affected a wealthy minority, similar in nature to the wealth tax initiative of former French President Francois Hollande) and to join NATO proved contentious, with two of the Social Democrats' former coalition partners (the Swedish Greens and Swedish Left Party, who had both pulled out of confidence and supply) unsurprisingly voting against Swedish accession to NATO membership (all other parties in the R
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian
Read more

On the Spanish regional elections of 2023-a warning for progressives

The Spanish regional elections of 2023, especially those in the "Empty Spain" regions far west of the federal capital of Madrid and prosperous yet famously rebellious Catalonia, resulted in a sharp shift towards conservatism and conservative populism. Both Partido Popular (PP, Spain's equivalent of the Conservatives) and Vox (the Spanish equivalent of Reform UK/UKIP) made sweeping gains in all regions, notably taking overall control in Madrid (normally an impossible feat under Spain's PR system), more than doubling their seat total in Valencia to top the poll there, and wresting control of Asturias, La Rioja, and Cantabria from the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE, Spain's equivalent of Labour) and the Cantabrian Regionalist Party respectively. Under the tenure of Pedro Sanchez, the current PSOE-Podemos coalition is floundering and has not done much to ensure Spain's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic since the last restrictions ended in 2021, and P
Read more