Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby
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Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, PC (born July 27, 1930), is a British politician. Originally a Labour MP, she was one of the "Gang of Four" rebels who founded the (now-defunct) SDP (Social Democratic Party) in 1981. She became the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, but stepped down from the position at the November 2004 State Opening of Parliament.
Born Shirley Vivien Teresa Catlin, Williams was the daughter of political scientist and philosopher George Catlin and novelist Vera Brittain.
She began her career as a journalist, having graduated from Somerville College, Oxford (where she arrived some years after her political rival Margaret Thatcher). In 1955 she married philosopher Bernard Williams. She became a Labour MP for the Hertfordshire constituency of Hitchin in 1964, and rose quickly to a junior ministerial position. Between 1971 and 1973 she served as shadow Home Secretary. In 1974 she became Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection under Harold Wilson, and, when Wilson was succeeded in 1976 by James Callaghan, she became Secretary of State for Education. In 1974 she divorced Bernard Williams, but continued to be known by her married name. Williams' "untidy" image endeared her to many women, and she was still regarded as a future Labour leader.
The Labour Party lost the 1979 general election, and she lost her seat (which had been renamed Hertford and Stevenage in 1974) to Bowen Wells. In 1981, unhappy with the influence of the far left, she resigned from the party along with Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers, to form the SDP. Later that year, following the death of Conservative Sir Rodney Graham Page, she won a by-election in Crosby in Merseyside, becoming the first person elected as an SDP MP.
Despite becoming president of the new party, she lost her seat in the 1983 general election. She supported the party's subsequent merger with the Liberal Party in 1988, to become the Liberal Democrats. Williams married Harvard academic Richard Neustadt, moved to the United States, and effectively retired from active politics. She returned to politics as a life peer with the title Baroness Williams of Crosby in 1993, and was leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords from 2001 to 2004. She is on the Advisory Council of the Institute for Public Policy Research and is a president of Chatham House.
She made her last speech as her party's leader in the House of Lords at the Liberal Democrat party conference in autumn 2004, to rapturous applause.
External links
- [Baroness Williams of Crosby] profile at the site of Liberal Democrats
- [link] interview May 2006 on www.politicsjunkie.co.uk
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