Betty boothroyd born

Baroness Boothroyd OM PC

The College was very saddened to hear of the death on 26 February of one of the Honorary Fellows, Baroness Betty Boothroyd OM PC.  Betty Boothroyd was a Labour Parliamentarian and the first woman Speaker of the House of Commons. She was first elected to parliament in and the House of Commons became her life; the Times obituary (see 28 February and below) recalls that she was normally ‘in complete control of the House’.

Born in she grew up in the milltown of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire where she went to the St Paulinus RC School, the same school as her mother and sister, but failed the plus exam and moved to Dewsbury’s commercial college. Leaving Dewsbury at age 17 she became a dancer, worked in London as a secretary at Labour’s headquarters, and then took a sabbatical in the USA which included campaigning for John F Kennedy at the Presidential election ending up on Capitol Hill, Washington DC where she earned ‘more than a British MP at that time’. Her election as Speaker in the House of Commons and at her retirement in July were both occasions greeted by applause from MPs &#; ‘breaches of Commons procedure [that] summed up her popularity’. In she was appointed to the select group of distinguished people awarded the Order of Merit (OM), a personal gift of the Queen.

When the College Tower was nearing completion the then Master, Dr Richard Laws, approached Downing Street as to whether the Prime Minister, John Major, a Cambridgeshire MP, would be prepared to open the tower. Failing that enquiry, the College approached Betty Boothroyd who lived in Cambridgeshire. A letter of acceptance was received almost by return of post from the Speaker&#;s office. The plaque giving details of her visit in April is on the wall of the College&#;s entrance opposite the Porters&#; window. On that occasion the Speaker drove herself to the College without any officials, indicating that her car was full of security equipment. She gave a delightful address

Betty Boothroyd was the first female Speaker of the House of Commons. That alone would be enough to ensure her place in political history, but she was also one of the most popular occupants of the Speaker’s extremely large and uncomfortable green chair. Being a woman of practical disposition, she placed a copy of the political bible Erskine May on it so that she could remain upright during debates.

Other Speakers served for far longer than Boothroyd’s eight years () or left a more lasting imprint on the conduct of the House, but none who came before her was so widely known or liked among those with little interest in politics. For this she had to thank television and her own sense of theatre, not to mention her natural voice projection. ’I never wanted silence in the House,’ she said. ’I never wanted a morgue. I wanted a debating chamber.’

She was not the first televised Speaker. The cameras had been allowed into the House, on sufferance at first, in but Bernard Weatherill, then in the chair, was naturally reticent and never achieved in the country the reputation he enjoyed at Westminster. Television had already been preceded by regular radio broadcasts and when these were introduced in , George Thomas, the Speaker with mellifluous Welsh tones and what to many listeners was the novel cry of ‘order, order’, enjoyed considerable popularity.

But neither of them inspired the widespread fame and affection gained by Boothroyd. It must have been with some difficulty that Tony Blair did not describe her in his valedictory tribute as ‘the people’s Speaker’. He called her instead ‘something of a national institution’.

She was also well known abroad. Her frequent official visits to foreign parliaments as an enthusiastic ambassador for the Commons naturally produced considerable publicity in the many countries she visited, but she was best known in the United States, where public service broadcasting regularly featured proceedings at Westminster. On one occas

Born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, on 8 October , to textile workers Archibald and Mary Boothroyd, Betty was educated at council schools and went on to study at Dewsbury College of Commerce and Art. In the s, Betty enjoyed a short career as a dancer, but then decided to follow a career in politics, having been a member of the Labour Party since her teens.

During the s, Betty spent time working in the House of Commons as a secretary and political assistant to various Members of Parliament, including Barbara Castle. She contested parliamentary seats at Leicester South East () and Peterborough () before travelling to the United States in to begin work in Washington as a legislative assistant for an American congressman until

Betty returned to the UK and continued her work as secretary and political assistant to various senior Labour politicians. In she was elected to a seat on Hammersmith Borough Council, where she remained until Her aim was still to gain a seat in Parliament and she contested seats in Nelson and Colne () and Rossendale () before winning a seat in as the Labour candidate for West Bromwich, later to become West Bromwich West, a position she retained until , holding the seat in six general elections.

The second image on this page shows Betty celebrating an election win with her mother, Mary.

He harboured parliamentary ambitions which were never realised but eventually he was made a life peer and delighted in entertaining leading society figures, as well as the movers and shakers in the Labour Party.

It was a world away from the streets of Dewsbury but Boothroyd, by all accounts, settled in well and became part of the family.

Walston's son Oliver later said that his father's relationship with Betty Boothroyd was very close but, in no sense could it have been called intimate. Indeed, she sued newspapers who suggested otherwise.

In fact, Boothroyd remained single throughout her life, admitting to having had boyfriends, and three proposals, but declaring that she was too busy to enter into any long-term commitment.

In May , and at the fifth attempt, she finally entered Parliament after winning a by-election in the safe Labour seat of West Bromwich.

"I had become the girl least likely to succeed," she later recalled. "If I had lost West Bromwich, I would have slit my throat."

She was appointed an assistant whip in the incoming Labour government of and also served on the party's National Executive.

She became a deputy Speaker in , the second woman to hold that position after the Conservative MP Betty Harvie Anderson who had been deputy in the early 70s.