Tag Archives: nancy seear

Caron Lindsay

Remembering a wonderful, zero-hoots giving, wise Liberal

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 7th August 2019 - 10:22 pm

Alex Wilcock has put up a marvellous thread on Twitter tonight marking 106 years since Baroness Nancy Seear’s birth.

I was lucky enough to hear her forthright views in person at a couple of conferences back in the 1990s and I remember how sad I was when she died in the middle of the General Election campaign in 1997. Her lifetime of putting all she had into advancing the liberal cause and she never saw our big breakthrough.

Read the whole thread:

There are some brilliant stories – her take-down of Paddy at a Federal Policy Committee meeting when he was leader – and her vigorous defence of him when he needed it.

i always really admired her. She said what she thought in the most direct way imaginable.

You can see the BBC News report of her death from around 19:15 here.

Her obituary from the Independent by fellow peer Geoff Tordoff is here. 

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 16 Comments
Mark Pack

Mothers of Liberty: Women who built British Liberalism

By Mark Pack | Tue 23rd October 2012 - 10:50 am

For an organisation that looks to the past and to party politics, it is almost inevitable that the Liberal Democrat History Group’s publications are rather dominated with accounts of men. Even now, well into the 21st century, we only just have the first female Liberal Democrat ministers, whilst female Liberal Democrat Cabinet members or party leaders are still something for the future.

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Stephen Tall

Who are the greatest Liberal Prime Ministers who never were?

By Stephen Tall | Sun 3rd April 2011 - 3:23 pm

Mark Pack reviewed Francis Beckett’s new counterfactual collection, The Prime Ministers Who Never Were, on the Voice earlier this week — 14 ‘Big Beasts’ who, had the chips fallen differently, might have become premiers.

The list is mostly inevitable with a couple of intriguing outsiders: Austen Chamberlain, J R Clynes, Lord Halifax, Oswald Mosley, Herbert Morrison, Hugh Gaitskell, Rab Butler, George Brown, Norman Tebbit, Michael Foot, Denis Healey, Neil Kinnock, John Smith and David Miliband.

Voice readers will notice one evident fact: there’s not a single Liberal (or SDP) name among them. In some ways it’s not that surprising. After …

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Mark Pack

Forgotten Liberal heroes: Nancy Seear

By Mark Pack | Wed 2nd March 2011 - 10:25 am

Listen to Liberal Democrats make speeches and there are frequent references to historical figures, but drawn from a small cast. Just the quartet of John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, David Penhaligon corner almost all of the market, especially since Bob Maclennan stopped making speeches to party conference. Some of the forgotten figures deserve their obscurity but others do not. Charles James Fox’s defence of civil liberties against a dominating government during wartime or Earl Grey’s leading of the party back into power and major constitutional reform are good examples of mostly forgotten figures who could …

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Domininc Addington

An Interview with the Whips Office – comfy chairs will be provided…

By Domininc Addington | Thu 22nd July 2010 - 5:45 pm

The word ‘whip’, in parliamentary terms at least, is associated with accusations of the ‘dark arts’. But whips are people too, particularly in the Lords, so your intrepid guest editor retrieved his Parliamentary spouse pass and made an appointment…

Dominic Bryce Hubbard, the 6th Baron Addington, is one of five hereditary Peers sitting on the Liberal Democrat benches. He inherited his title in 1982, aged eighteen, but was only able to take up his seat in the House of Lords on reaching his twenty-first birthday. He has held a series of positions, as Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Culture, Media and Sport, …

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