Tag Archives: shirley williams

Caron Lindsay

WATCH: Lib Dem History Group’s Shirley Williams fringe meeting

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 22nd April 2023 - 12:18 pm

Last month, Neil Stockley wrote about a fringe to be held celebrating the wonderful Shirley Williams, one of my political superheroes, at the York Conference.

But what made Shirley Williams so special was the way which she articulated her political views. She always spoke clearly and directly, combining charm and eloquence. She came across as thoughtful and logical, as well as authentic and sincere. With her passionate advocacy of a fair and tolerant society Shirley energised liberals over many years.

At our Spring Conference fringe meeting, the Liberal Democrat History Group will assess the life and legacy of Shirley Williams. Our guest speakers will be Mark Peel (author, Shirley Williams: The Biography), Lord Tom McNally and Baroness Julie Smith. 

I was very sad to miss the meeting in York, but no worries, we can watch it all below, from the Lib Dem History Group You Tube Channel. There’s lots of other interesting stuff there too.

Enjoy!

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Neil Stockley

Shirley Williams: Liberal Lion and Trailblazer

By Neil Stockley | Thu 9th March 2023 - 8:55 am

When Shirley Williams died in April 2021, Sir Ed Davey paid tribute to a “a Liberal lion” and remembered her as a “trailblazer” and an “inspiration to millions”. 

There were many other affectionate tributes. Unusually for a politician, Shirley was widely loved during her lifetime. David Steel once described her as “a national treasure, rather like the late Queen Mum”. As a Liberal Democrat icon, she stood alongside Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy.

Shirley Williams was, after all, the most popular of the “Gang of Four” who broke away from Labour in 1981 and formed the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Roy Jenkins and David Owen provided the political weight and gravitas, but Shirley provided the personal warmth and empathy. With her stunning victory at the Crosby by-election in November 1981, she was the first candidate to be elected as an MP under the new party’s banner. “Shirl the Pearl”, as she was known, later became the first president of the SDP. 

Even so, her broad and enduring popularity was, in some ways, remarkable. Shirley last held government office in 1979 –as education secretary in Jim Callaghan’s ill-fated Labour government, from when she was best remembered for expanding the comprehensive school system. She passed up the chance to contest the SDP’s first leadership election in 1982 and lost Crosby the following year, a victim of adverse boundary changes, and never returned to the Commons. 

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Mary Reid

And so we remembered Shirley Williams

By Mary Reid | Wed 11th May 2022 - 10:35 am

I was very fortunate to be able to attend the Memorial Service for Shirley Williams in Westminster Cathedral yesterday.

I should point that I really did mean Westminster Cathedral, not Westminster Abbey. The Cathedral is the mother church of Roman Catholics in England and Wales and is located near to Victoria Station.

I arrived early, and as I hadn’t visited it before took the opportunity to look around. It is a large, handsome building with extensive use of decorative brickwork, typical of the late Victorian period when it was designed. The inside is lined with a series of chapels dedicated to various saints, and the ceilings of almost all of them incorporated stunning gold mosaics. The ceiling in the chapel dedicated to the fisherman, St Andrew, shimmered with fish scales.

The seats started to fill up with the great and the good of the party and beyond –  mainly peers, because the MPs were still debating the Queen’s Speech – plus a smattering of other Lib Dem campaigners from across the country.

It was good to see the two remaining members of the Gang of Four – Bill Rodgers and David Owen – as well as David Steel who brokered the Alliance between the SDP and the Liberals.

I also spotted John Bercow, and, rather surprisingly, Jacob Rees-Mogg.

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The Voice

You are invited to Shirley Williams’ Memorial Service

By The Voice | Tue 22nd February 2022 - 11:51 am

Embed from Getty Images

You are invited to celebrate the life of
Shirley Vivian Teresa Brittain Williams

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The Voice

Liberal Democrat Voice pays tribute to Shirley Williams

By The Voice | Tue 13th April 2021 - 2:45 pm

Members of the Liberal Democrat Voice team pay tribute to Shirley Williams

Paul Walter:
I took the (rather fuzzy) photo of Shirley (above) at the Spring Conference in Brighton in 2013.

My mother is not “Political” although she has a great political understanding, with a small “p”.

Back in the late 1960s, she saw Shirley Williams as her favourite politician. Simply because she was, in my mother’s words, “so sensible”,

I knew what she meant. There was always something about how Shirley spoke.

In debates she would never get heated or involved in “argy-bargy”. She would listen carefully to the opposing views, with her head slightly leaning to one side, and take notes. (In fact, reviewing photos of Shirley over the years, I see that she often had her head leaning slightly to one side as if to emphasise that she was listening). When it came to her turn to speak, she would be absolutely devastating (to the opposition) because she would be composed, informed, “as sharp as a tack” and take down the opposing view with extreme precision. In doing so, she always appeared to be totally calm but absolutely precise.

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Dick Newby

Shirley Williams – a tribute

By Dick Newby | Tue 13th April 2021 - 1:00 pm

Embed from Getty Images
I first met Shirley as a teenage student. I served with her on the Labour Committee for Europe. I was at her side as she chaired every session of every SDP conference. And latterly I worked with her closely in the Lords where initially she was my leader and, more recently and improbably, I was hers.

Over these 50 years, Shirley didn’t really change. She was passionate about the things she believed in – principally social justice and Europe. She was fearless in advocating these things and was prepared to take political hostility head on to promote them.

But what set Shirley apart from any other politicians I’ve met was her empathy and her charisma. She was genuinely interested in other people, their ideas and their lives. And she had a special magnetic charm which meant that people warmed to her and were energised by her.

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Mary Reid

Breaking news: Shirley Williams

By Mary Reid | Mon 12th April 2021 - 3:58 pm

We have just learnt the very sad news that Shirley Williams has died, at the age of 90.

Ed Davey said:

This is heartbreaking for me and for our whole Liberal Democrat family.

Shirley has been an inspiration to millions, a Liberal lion and a true trailblazer. I feel privileged to have known her, listened to her and worked with her. Like so many others, I will miss her terribly.

Political life will be poorer without her intellect, her wisdom and her generosity.  Shirley had a limitless empathy only too rare in politics today; she connected with people, cared about their lives and saw politics as a crucial tool to change lives for the better.

As a young Liberal, Shirley Williams had a profound impact on me, as she did on countless others across the political spectrum. Her vision and bravery, not least in founding the SDP, continues to inspire Liberal Democrats today.

Rest in peace, Shirley. My thoughts and prayers are with your family and your friends.

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Celebrating Shirley Williams’ contribution to British politics on her 90th birthday

By The Social Democrat Group | Mon 27th July 2020 - 8:45 am

To celebrate Shirley Williams’ 90th birthday, members of the Social Democrat Group executive have written four articles about her contribution to the party and to British politics. Below is a summary of each piece. To see the full pieces, follow the links.

George Kendall joined the SDP when it was formed in 1981 and has been a member of the SDP and the Lib Dems ever since. He is acting chair of the Social Democrat Group.

He writes that he was like many foot soldiers in the SDP in Shirley being his favourite politician. He loved her honesty and humanity in …

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Caron Lindsay

Tonight, 8pm, BBC Parliament – Conversation with Shirley Williams

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 16th July 2017 - 8:55 am

Shirley Williams is probably my biggest political hero. It was she who inspired me in 1981 when she fought the Crosby by-election. Her sharp intellect, indefatigable energy and ability to communicate with her audience have all made sure that she is loved by many of all political persuasions.

She came up to Scotland during the last few days of the horribly divisive independence referendum in 2014. It was a painful time. However, as Shirley stepped on to Dunfermline High Street, one of the Yes campaigners came across and took her hand and said how much she had always admired her. It was a rare moment of togetherness during that most unpleasant of campaigns.

I was distraught that I missed her when she came up to Edinburgh West and East Dunbartonshire during the General Election. At 86, she was still supporting and helping other women get to Westminster. 

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The Voice

New Year Honours: Congratulations to Liberal Democrats

By The Voice | Sat 31st December 2016 - 10:42 am

Late last night we published the news that Shirley Williams has been made a Companion of Honour in the New Year Honours.

But she is not the only Lib Dem to be honoured today.

 

Sir Steve Webb – as we will now know him – has been claimed by many to be the best Pensions Minister the country has known. Before his Parliamentary career he was Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bath, so had an unprecedented level of knowledge and understanding in his field of expertise.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Shirley Williams: Bring all sides together to negotiate our future with Europe

By NewsHound | Sun 10th July 2016 - 2:26 pm

While Tory and Labour parties rip themselves apart, the Liberal Democrats have spent a great deal of time offering ideas and solutions. The latest is Shirley Williams in today’s Observer:

She succinctly sums up the mess we are in:

With every passing day, the problems confronting the new prime minister multiply. The balance of payments worsens, the pound sinks against the dollar, the London property market, no longer attractive to ambitious young bankers and financial experts, declines and Brexit begins to look more and more like snake oil.

How do we face those challenges? Well, it needs strong government and opposition:

To get through the business of negotiating an alternative to membership of the European Union, and to do so without our country falling apart, will require patience, tolerance of different and often strongly held views and good, grown-up government. None of these were evident in the bitter, brutal referendum debate. We need not just good government but a serious, responsible opposition as well.

She draws parallels with the mess of the Labour Party in the 80s.

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The Voice

Shirley on peace and economic prosperity that EU offers

By The Voice | Sun 12th June 2016 - 12:20 pm

Shirley Williams has been out and about campaigning for us to stay in the EU in the same way as she campaigned for Scotland to see in the UK. She took part in a question and answer session in Wales based around the question “What has the EU done for us?”

Shirley’s answer was clear. She talked about how the EU had secured the peace in Europe:

The main motivation behind the EU was to end wars in Europe after the horror of two world wars and for 71 years we have not had any wars in the territory covered by the EU governments,

She said that the campaign had become too personal and vicious, deviating from what actually matters:

One aspect of it I deeply regret is that it has been much too personal,” she said. “Much too bitchy and in many ways much too involved in one issue – that is, who is going to be the next Prime Minister of this country.

I think that’s a great pity as this is a very crucial issue – they have been few more crucial since the WW2. Whatever side of the argument we are on it is a travesty and a shame to allow it to become a slanging match between two sides of one party, which is essentially what it has become. The debate has been less impressive than it should have been and we have heard too few voices saying pretty much the same things.

Then she talked of the importance of being in on the discussions, working out with our neighbours how to deal with the huge challenges of the day – and cited the Paris climate change talks as an example of what can be achieved.

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The Voice

ICYMI: Shirley Williams speaking on the EU at the National Liberal Club

By The Voice | Wed 25th May 2016 - 11:50 am

On Monday, Shirley Williams came out of retirement to give a speech on why Britain should remain in the EU at the National Liberal Club.

The party made very good use of Facebook Live to broadcast the event – and you can watch the speech again here.

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Caron Lindsay

Watch: Shirley Williams on retirement and how the government’s attitude to junior doctors could break NHS

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 13th February 2016 - 8:55 am

Shirley on Victoria DerbyshireOn Thursday, her last day in the House of Lords before her retirement, Shirley Williams spent 20 minutes talking to Victoria Derbyshire.

You can watch the conversation, which covered women in politics, social media (she thinks that “the cruellest people in society” shouldn’t be given a voice), how some were bemused by her specialism in fields not traditionally done by women, such as nuclear proliferation, how we should take thousands of refugee children and relived the previous struggle over Ugandan refugees in the 70s when she stuck to her guns.

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Caron Lindsay

Shirley Williams’ impression of Donald Trump

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 9th February 2016 - 7:00 am

This little gem is from last Friday’s PM on Radio 4 and probably means that my licence fee has been well worth it for these 90 seconds of Shirley wit alone. Enjoy:


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Caron Lindsay

Shirley Williams makes her final speech in the Lords

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 29th January 2016 - 10:40 am

I was out and about yesterday and ended up being marooned in Glasgow and not getting home till late so I missed Shirley’s final speech in the House of Lords. She has been a giant of common sense and wisdom and one of my political heroes from the moment I first realised politics was a thing. This is a speech that you have to watch as well as read for all sorts of reasons, the interaction with David Steel being one, so thank goodness the BBC have provided an embeddable version.

She talks about the great institutions of the BBC, the NHS and the EU and how important they are to our national life. Two of them didn’t even exist when she was born.

Heaven knows she deserves her retirement at 85 and we all wish her well, but we are so going to miss her regular contributions to the Lords. However, it looks like she will be campaigning in the EU Referendum, which is great news as her contributions were one of the very few high spots of the Scottish Referendum on independence.

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Dick Newby

Dick Newby writes….Limehouse at 35

By Dick Newby | Mon 25th January 2016 - 11:55 am

2016-01-20 13.51.09

35 years on from the Limehouse Declaration and the launch of the SDP it’s easy to see the similarities. We have a Labour Party with a very left wing leader pushing ideologically driven policies and zero prospect of winning the next election. And we have a Conservative Party which is pursuing harsh economic policies at home and is split down the middle over the UK’s relationship with the EU.

But if there are similarities with 1981 there are even more differences. Britain is now a very different place socially and economically. It is much more ethnically diverse, particularly in the large cities. It is far less deferential and far fewer people have a strong party loyalty. It is also much more affluent – the average household is now earns twice as much as it did in 1981 – and unemployment and inflation are both much lower.

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Caron Lindsay

Shirley Williams to retire from the Lords, 51 years after she was first elected as an MP

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 17th December 2015 - 7:32 pm

Shirley WilliamsThere are few people who have inspired me more than Shirley Williams. In 1981, 14 year old Caron watched her talk about scaling unscaleable heights and just taking opportunities when they present themselves. That was before she put herself up to stand in a by-election in a seat with a whacking great Tory majority. She won, of course, in Crosby in 1981.

Today, it’s been announced that she is retiring from the House of Lords. We certainly can’t grudge her her retirement.She’s 85 years old, after all, and she’s still been a thoughtful and powerful presence in the Chamber.

Tonight, Tim Farron will speak at an event to honour her 51 years of public service. She was first elected as an MP in 1964.

The party is going to miss her so much. Conference still loves her. This September, she was very influential in persuading Conference to back the leadership’s proposal for yet another fudge on nuclear weapons and did so in a much more conciliatory, thoughtful and wise way than some in the debate.

I will never forget the day she came to Dunfermline during the independence referendum. She could fairly draw a crowd, and even people from the Yes campaign were coming over to talk to her. At one point she held the hand of one woman who expressed her disappointment with the coalition. It was a moment of togetherness in a divisive campaign.

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Shirley Williams tells George Osborne that he has 10 days to save the NHS

By Mary Reid | Mon 16th November 2015 - 12:17 pm

 

Writing in the Guardian, Shirley Williams picks up the baton passed on by Nigel Crisp, the former chief executive of the NHS, who four years ago wrote about his experiences in his book 24 Hours to Save the NHS.

Shirley explains that many of the financial woes in the NHS have been inherited from past schemes:

For example, the number of funded places for young men and women training in this country as nurses was cut by 12% – 2,500 places – in 2012. The consequent shortage of newly qualified nurses has been filled by people recruited by employment agencies. The cost of agency staff is one of the main reasons for overspending by NHS trusts. In 2014/15, agency staff cost the NHS £1,770m, a year-on-year increase of 29%.

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Caron Lindsay

LibLink: Shirley Williams: American democracy is up for sale and it’s a warning to us all

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 2nd September 2015 - 3:27 pm

Shirley Williams has been writing for the Independent about the pernicious influence of big money in politics in the US. She writes about the huge amounts of money being poured into Republican campaigns, how this clearly gives them advantages in access to the voters through the media. More worryingly, she outlines what appears to be a strategic approach of using the courts to abolish funding limits and of gerrymandering congressional districts to again give themselves an advantage at the expense of others.

She gives a very stark warning about why this is a bad thing. We need to think that we have a realistic chance of getting rid of our government if we don’t like them. A politics where you have to have the backing of the stinking rich to succeed is not exactly likely to benefit all and will lead to disillusionment:

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Caron Lindsay

Shirley Williams highlights SNP’s failings in government

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 23rd April 2015 - 11:40 am

SCaron and Shirleyhirley Williams has written to the Times (£) to highlight that the SNP has not been as successful in government as it would like people to believe. She highlights failures on student debt, class sizes, the NHS and, importantly for anyone of a liberal mindset, its many failings on civil liberties.Here’s her letter:

The election campaign in the United Kingdom has been seriously impoverished by the absence of any detailed analysis south of the border of the SNP’s record in government.

Today the Scottish NHS is in crisis, with targets for cancer treatments not being met. More than 1,000 beds have been closed in Scottish hospitals since 2012. Last year, expenditure on the NHS in Scotland fell by 1.2 per cent while in England it rose by 4.4 per cent. Expenditure on training nurses and midwives in Scotland has been cut by 11 per cent.

In education, the SNP pledged to limit primary school class sizes to a maximum of 18 — a pledge it made when it first came into government in 2007. In fact, class sizes have risen in every year since 2010.

University students have been saddled with greater debt because they have to start repaying their loans once their incomes reach £16,500, while the figure in England is now £21,000. Worst of all, part-time college places have been cut by 130,000 — a travesty at a time when the UK needs skilled women and men to get the economy back on track. The SNP has not even met its unambitious target to build 6,000 affordable homes, despite the obvious need.

Additionally, the SNP’s troubling record on civil liberties has been further extended by its efforts to build an identity database based on NHS records. Its creation of a single national police force has been to the detriment of local policing and communities they serve; Highlanders have been aghast at the sight of armed police undertaking routine duties on their streets. It is a bigger insult that local communities’ calls to reverse the policy were ignored.

The SNP now seeks to present itself as a party with a strong interest in the future of the UK. Its own record makes that very hard to believe.

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Caron Lindsay

Shirley Williams on the campaign trail: Vikki Slade is a worthy successor to Annette Brooke

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 7th April 2015 - 3:55 pm

Shirley Williams may be approaching her 85th birthday, but she is putting a massive effort into campaigning around the country and her energy puts most of us to shame. This is a very good thing as she’s still one of the country’s most popular political figures. Last September, she wowed Dunfermline and, for me, one of the most poignant moments of the referendum campaign was when she took the hand of a Yes campaigner in the street. She spoke at Tim Farron’s adoption meeting recently and last week was at the other end of England, endorsing Vikki Slade’s Mid Dorset and North Poole constituency.

From the Bournemouth Echo:

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Caron Lindsay

Who’s the woman who has inspired you most?

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 8th March 2015 - 10:13 pm

Caron and ShirleyIt’s International Women’s Day today and on Twitter, there’s been an #inspiredby meme on Twitter where we have to say which women have inspired us.

I went a bit mad, as you can see from my Twitter feed. I’ve been lucky enough to know so many fabulous women in politics from all parties that if I started writing about them now, I’d still be here this time next week. And that would just be politics. So I’m going to limit myself to just two.

The first is someone who was my first political hero, ever since she made that speech at that first SDP conference where she talked about being required to scale unscaleable heights as she announced her candidacy for the Crosby by-election. She’s done so much to advance and advocate women’s rights internationally. She was a minister in a world where it was ok for interviewers like Robin Day to compliment female MPs on their outfits and say how pretty they looked. She was brave enough to recognise that she and the Labour Party had come to the end of the road and to branch out in a new direction when the SDP was formed. Her energy even now, at the age of 84, is incredible. It was fantastic to have her come to Scotland for the best part of the last 10 days of the referendum campaign last year. She was filling halls and winning debates right up till the last minute. I found it quite emotional to see a Yes campaigner come up to her on Dunfermline High Street and say that she’d been her hero all her life too. I’m talking of course about Shirley Williams. She’s had such a fascinating life. It must have been so hard to have been uprooted and sent to strangers across the Atlantic during the War, thousands of miles from her parents but she threw herself into that experience. As she grew up she met some of the most progressive thinkers of her day.

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The Voice

Shirley Williams on A life in politics

By The Voice | Sat 24th January 2015 - 8:55 am

The Daily Politics has been running a series of interviews with political figures in their A Life in Politics series.

This week it was Shirley Williams talking about her varied career and personal life. Look back not he formation of the SDP, her passion for education reform and the prospects for the Liberal Democrats in the election, saying “we’re bound to be a main factor in another coalition.” Oh, and don’t call her indecisive.

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Paul Walter

Shirley Williams talks about the new film based on the life of her mother, Vera Brittain

By Paul Walter | Wed 7th January 2015 - 11:54 am

Baroness Shirley Williams has been speaking to the Telegraph on the occasion of the release of a film based on her mother, Vera Brittain’s memoir, Testament of Youth:

Baroness Williams has praised her mother Vera Brittain’s lifelong efforts as a pacifist, saying her only regret is that “she wasn’t here when we fought against the Iraq war.”

The 84-year-old Lib Dem grandee spoke about her mother at the premiere of the film adaptation of Brittain’s First World War memoir, Testament of Youth.

She said of the writer, feminist and campaigner who died in 1970: “She never gave up. She was as much against the Vietnam War as she was against the First World War.”

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NewsHound

LibLink: Shirley Williams: How Scotland could lead the way towards a federal UK

By NewsHound | Wed 17th September 2014 - 12:38 pm

Shirley WilliamsThe Guardian posted an article by Shirley Williams yesterday, in which she writes:

The referendum decision will come at the culmination of a long period of disillusionment with politicians. The SNP, like the other mainstream parties, has attracted its own share of public frustration about centralisation and the excessive rule of Edinburgh over other regions of Scotland. Nationally, the disillusionment began with the poll tax, the decline of manufacturing in Scotland, Wales, the Midlands and the north of England during the Thatcher years, the failure of our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial crisis in 2008 which loaded on taxpayers the huge costs of bailing out the banks.

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Caron Lindsay

Shirley Williams wows Dunfermline – in pictures

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 14th September 2014 - 11:55 am

Shirley Williams has been an absolute star these last few days. She came to Scotland on Thursday and will be here until Tuesday night. She’s already travelled the length of the country. She spoke at the Liberal Democrat rally on Thursday night, went to Orkney for a hugely well attended debate on Friday night and was back in Fife yesterday afternoon.

She spoke to voters on the High Street where both campaigns were out in force. I’m sure the Yes campaigner with the megaphone who yelled out “Bow down to your Imperial Overlords” as we all assembled for a photo.

Shirley group photo Dunfermline

 

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The Voice

LDVideo: “Hypocrites, idealists and liars – can politics be sincere?” – watch Shirley Williams debate with George Galloway and Peter Oborne

By The Voice | Wed 10th September 2014 - 11:58 am

Recently, Shirley Williams took part in a debate held by the Institute of Arts and Ideas, on the subject of sincerity in politics. Also participating were George Galloway, Peter Oborne and Philip Collins, speechwriter to Tony Blair.

We must confess to not yet having had the time to watch the whole thing but we like what we have seen, like the bit when Shirley Williams takes Galloway to task for misquoting her and he, who had been in a massive rant about how politicians were a bunch of liars, was forced to admit he’d been exaggerating to make his point.

Shirley talks about how the media contribute to false perceptions of politicians, giving an example of how someone said to her that they could never vote for her because she was all for state education yet sent her son to Eton. Shirley doesn’t have a son.

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NewsHound

LibLink: Shirley Williams on a role for Europe in solving the Gaza crisis

By NewsHound | Mon 11th August 2014 - 9:16 am

Many thanks to Paul Walter for bringing our attention to this piece, written by Baroness Shirley Williams for the Guardian last week.

In it, she calls for a more activist stance by the European Union, given her view that America is not, and cannot be, an effective mediator between the two sides in the Gaza crisis.

The EU, as the main financier of the Palestinian Authority, is in a position to influence the PLO and to work with the Arab League on a settlement. The US remains Israel’s essential ally, but as a mediator is hobbled by the dependence of its

…

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Mary Reid

LibLink: Shirley Williams “Europe has a duty to Gaza”

By Mary Reid | Tue 5th August 2014 - 1:35 pm

Shirley WilliamsWriting in the Guardian today, Shirley Williams says:

The tragedy of the centenary we commemorate this week is that it falls as some of the most brutal and merciless wars of those same hundred years are raging.

She refers to the current conflicts in Syria, Gaza, Iraq, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.

Attacks on Belgian and French civilians, including children, by Germany’s invading army in August 1914 shocked the public and politicians in Britain and elsewhere into intervening, and many individual men into enlisting – so much so that

…

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