Margaret Beckett

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Margaret Mary Beckett (born 15 January 1943) is a British politician. She is Labour MP for Derby South and, since May 5, 2006, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. She is the first woman to hold this position in the British Cabinet and only the second woman, after Margaret Thatcher, to hold one of the four Great Offices of State or to be the Leader of the Opposition. She is styled The Rt Hon Margaret Beckett MP.

Contents

1 Background
2 Political career
3 Leader of the Labour Party 1994
4 External links

Background

She was born Margaret Mary Jackson in 1943, in Ashton-under-Lyne to an English carpenter father and an Irish Catholic mother. Her sister is a nun. She was educated at the Notre Dame High School for Girls in Norwich, the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where she qualified as a metallurgist, and The John Dalton Polytechnic.

In 1961, Jackson joined Associated Electrical Industries as a student apprentice in metallurgy. She joined the Transport and General Workers Union in 1964 and remains a member over 40 years later. She joined the University of Manchester in 1966 as an experiment officer in its metallurgy department. In 1970 Jackson went to work for the Labour Party as a researcher in industrial policy.

Political career

In 1973, she was selected as Labour candidate for Lincoln, which the party wanted to win back from dissident ex-Labour MP Dick Taverne. Jackson lost to Taverne at the February 1974 General Election by 1,297 votes. After the election she went to work as a researcher for Judith Hart. Harold Wilson called another general election for the October, and Jackson again went to fight Taverne at Lincoln in the October 1974 General Election. This time Jackson was elected, albeit by just 984 votes.

Almost immediately after her election she was given a job as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to her old boss, Judith Hart, who was now the Minister for Overseas Development. Harold Wilson gave her a job as a Whip in 1975, and she was promoted in 1976 by James Callaghan as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Education and Science, replacing Joan Lestor, who had resigned in protest over spending cuts. She remained in that position until she lost her seat at the 1979 general election. The Conservative candidate Kenneth Carlisle gained the seat by 602 votes, the first time the party had won the seat since 1935.

She married Lionel Beckett, a local party official in Lincoln, shortly after her defeat. They have no children. She joined Granada Television in 1979 as a researcher. Out of Parliament, and now Margaret Beckett, she won election to Labour's National Executive Committee in 1980, and outspokenly supported left-winger Tony Benn for the Labour deputy leadership in 1981 against Denis Healey. She was the subject of a vociferous attack from Joan Lestor at the conference.

Beckett was chosen to fight the parliamentary seat of Derby South after the retirement of the right winger Walter Johnson. At the 1983 General Election she came very close to losing the seat but came out victorious by just 421 votes.

Returning to the House of Commons, Margaret Beckett gradually moved away from the hard left, supporting incumbent leader Neil Kinnock against Benn in 1988. By this time she was a front bencher, as a spokesperson on Social Security since 1984, becoming a member of the Shadow Cabinet in 1989 as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. After 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 became Leader of the Labour Party, for a brief period, following the sudden death of John Smith on May 12th 1994 from a heart attack, and was therefore also the Leader of the Opposition. However she came third in the subsequent leadership election, behind Tony Blair and John Prescott. Beckett had herself decided that the deputy leadership should be contested at the same time to ensure that the new leader's team had the full backing of party members, while also hoping that she would become leader. This was won by Prescott, so she did not win either post.

Under Tony Blair's leadership, Margaret Beckett was the Shadow Secretary of State for Health, and then from 1995 the Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Following the 1997 General Election, she entered Tony Blair's government as the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. She became Leader of the House of Commons in 1998.

After the 2001 General Election she was appointed as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Following the 2006 local elections she was made Foreign Secretary, the first woman to hold the post. She has managed to remain part of Blair's inner circle despite close links with the trade union movement. In August 2002 she expressed reservations about the prospect of a war in Iraq, but supported the 2003 Iraq war when the time came.

She is one of the five original members of the cabinet left and one of the longest-serving Labour frontbench spokespersons. As of June 2006, she is the last remaining Labour minister to have previous experience in the last Labour governments of Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan. She has received some praise for being a 'safe pair of hands' [link]; however, she saw some criticism in April 2006 when the details of Ministers' use of RAF aircraft for official travel were published. Beckett was discovered to have taken 134 flights on ministerial business between 2002 and March 2005, flying 102,673 miles.

Leader of the Labour Party 1994

Following the death of John Smith, Margaret Beckett became Leader of the Labour Party: the Party's constitution provides that, upon the death or resignation of an incumbent leader, the Deputy Leader automatically becomes leader for the remainder of the leadership term. Labour Leaders are subject to annual re-election at the time of the annual party conference. Accordingly, Beckett was constitutionally entitled to remain in office as leader, until the 1994 Labour Party Annual Conference; however, it was decided by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party, to bring forward the annual election for Leader and Deputy Leader to July 1994.

During the period between the death of John Smith and the subsequent election of Tony Blair as Labour Leader in July 1994, most television and other news reports referred to Beckett as Acting Labour Leader; this was technically incorrect for the reasons stated.

External links

[FCO — Rt Hon Margaret Beckett] official profile
[ePolitix — Rt Hon Margaret Beckett] official website
[Guardian Unlimited Politics — Ask Aristotle: Margaret Beckett MP]
[TheyWorkForYou.com — Margaret Beckett MP]

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