Shirley Vivian Teresa Brittain Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, CH, PC (néeCatlin; 27 July 1930 – 12 April 2021) was a British politician and academic. Originally a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP), 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 (SDP) in 1981 and, at the time of her retirement from politics, was a Liberal Democrat.[1]
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.
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.[8][5]
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."[10]
Always a passionately committed supporter of European integration,[14][15] 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.[5][16][17] Four years later, she was one of the leaders of the Britain in Europe campaign during the 1975 European Communities membership referendum.[15] Labour's anti-Europeanism during the Michael Foot years was one of the factors that drove her to abandon the party in 1981.[15]
In her 2016 valedictory speech to the House of Lords before that year's second membership referendum, she described the UK's European Union (EU) 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".[14][18]
Thursday, 21 June, 2007 She appeared on Question Time (TV programme) to discuss Salman Rushdie being honoured. She was strongly opposed to the action.[23]
Social Democratic Party
Williams lost her seat (renamed Hertford and Stevenage) when the Labour Party was defeated at the 1979 general election.[24] 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.[5] 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.[25]
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.[26] 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.[11][5] During this period, Williams remained a member of the National Executive of the Labour Party.[27] From 1980 to 1981, she was Chairman of the Fabian Society.[8]
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 (SDP). 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.[5]
Harvard University
Sitting beside Peter Ustinov during an episode of the late-night TV discussion programme After Dark, 1989
In 1988, Williams moved to the United States to serve as a professor at Harvard Kennedy School, remaining until 2001, and thereafter as Public Service Professor of Electoral Politics, Emerita.[28] Nonetheless, she remained active in politics and public service in Britain, the United States and internationally. During these years, Williams helped draft constitutions in Russia, Ukraine, and South Africa.[5] She also served as director of Harvard's Project Liberty, an initiative designed to assist the emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe; and as a board member and acting director of Harvard's Institute of Politics (IOP). Upon her elevation to the House of Lords in 1993, she returned to the United Kingdom.[19][29]
In June 2007, after Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as Prime Minister, Williams accepted a formal Government position as Advisor on Nuclear Proliferation provided she could serve as an independent advisor; she remained a Liberal Democrat. Her interest and commitment to education continued, and she served as Chair of Judges of the British Teaching Awards. Williams was a member of the Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation, established in October 2009.[34]
Williams was originally opposed to the Cameron–Clegg coalition's Health and Social Care Bill, describing it as "stealth privatisation" during 2011.[35] The government made some changes to the Bill, described by Williams as "major concessions",[36] but dismissed as "minor" by Guardian commentator Polly Toynbee.[37] Williams urged Liberal Democrats to support the amended Bill during the conference in March 2012,[38] saying "I would not have stuck with the bill, if I believed for one moment it would undermine the NHS."[39]
Williams spoke against same-sex marriage in the House of Lords, saying that "equality is not the same as sameness. That is the fundamental mistake in this Bill" and that women and men "complement one another", arguing that marriage between people of the same sex should not be called marriage but should have "different nomenclature". This was based on her belief that marriage is "a framework for procreation and the raising of children."[40] In late 2015, she announced her intention to retire from the House of Lords.[41] On 28 January 2016 she made her valedictory speech in the chamber, and on 11 February she officially retired, in pursuance of Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014.[18] In the 2017 New Year Honours, Williams was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour for "services to political and public life".[42]
Personal life
Williams married twice. At Oxford she met Peter Parker (the future head of British Rail) and they had a relationship. In her autobiography (Climbing the Bookshelves) Williams said that "...by the spring of 1949 I was in love with him, and he, a little, with me...". In 1955, she married the moral philosopher Bernard Williams. Bernard left Oxford to accommodate his wife's rising political ambitions, finding a post first at University College London (1959–64) and then as Professor of Philosophy at Bedford College, London (1964–67), while she worked as a journalist for the Financial Times and as Secretary of the Fabian Society. The marriage was dissolved in 1974;[43] Bernard Williams subsequently married Patricia Skinner and had two sons with her.[44] Shirley said of her marriage to Bernard:
... [T]here was something of a strain that comes from two things. One is that we were both too caught up in what we were respectively doing — we didn't spend all that much time together; the other, to be completely honest, is that I'm fairly unjudgmental and I found Bernard's capacity for pretty sharp putting-down of people he thought were stupid unacceptable. Patricia has been cleverer than me in that respect. She just rides it. He can be very painful sometimes. He can eviscerate somebody. Those who are left behind are, as it were, dead personalities. Judge not that ye be not judged. I was influenced by Christian thinking, and he would say "That's frightfully pompous and it's not really the point." So we had a certain jarring over that and over Catholicism.[44]
Her first marriage was annulled in 1980.[19][45] In 1987 she married the Harvard professor and presidential historian Richard Neustadt, who died in 2003.
She had a daughter with Bernard Williams, a stepdaughter, and two grandchildren. Her daughter, Rebecca, became a lawyer.[46] She was a longtime resident of Hertfordshire, living in Furneux Pelham after she was elected MP for Hitchin, and moving to Little Hadham later in life.[47]
Williams was a Roman Catholic and, from 2009, attended church every Sunday.[48] In Who's Who, she listed her recreations as "music, poetry, hill walking".[8]
She died at her home in the early hours of 12 April 2021, at the age of 90.[49][50][51] Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey called Williams a "Liberal lion and a true trailblazer" and stated that "political life will be poorer without her intellect, her wisdom and her generosity".[50]
Honours
Williams was made an Honorary Fellow of her alma mater, Somerville College, Oxford, in 1970, and of Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1977. Williams received a number of honorary doctorates:
Testament of Experience by Vera Brittain (1957).[59]
There is a substantial article on Shirley Williams by Phillip Whitehead in the Dictionary of Labour Biography, edited by Greg Rosen, Politico's Publishing, 2001, and one by Dick Newby in the Dictionary of Liberal Biography, edited by Duncan Brack, Politico's Publishing, 1998.
^Bostridge, Mark; Berry, Paul (2016). Vera Brittain: A Life. Little, Brown Book Group. p. 15. ISBN9780349008547. Retrieved 16 September 2021 – via Google Books snippets.
^Jeffries, Stuart (30 November 2002). "The quest for truth". Guardian Books. Retrieved 12 April 2021. After the divorce in 1974, Bernard married Patricia, but Shirley Williams had to wait for the Catholic church to annul the marriage before she could remarry.
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