SHIRLEY Williams was a deceptively soft-spoken, mild-mannered and unlikely renegade. Yet in 1981 she came within a whisker of destroying the Labour Party she had loved and served all her political life. One of the true political heavyweights of her age, and a pioneer of women’s ascent to high office, “Shirl the Girl”, who died […]
SHIRLEY Williams was a deceptively soft-spoken, mild-mannered and unlikely renegade.
Yet in 1981 she came within a whisker of destroying the Labour Party she had loved and served all her political life.
One of the true political heavyweights of her age, and a pioneer of women’s ascent to high office, “Shirl the Girl”, who died yesterday aged 90, was a much-loved woman with a fascinating private life.
As one of the rebel “Gang of Four” she launched the sensational revolt against unelectable leftie leader Michael Foot in a desperate bid to “break the mould of British politics”.
With ex-Cabinet heavy-weights Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers she launched the Social Democratic Party, capturing millions of votes from disenchanted Labour supporters.
At one point it seemed the SDP would eclipse Labour and steal its role as a potential party of government.
Instead it ground to a stand-still and eventually merged with the Liberal Party, now reduced to half a dozen MPs. Mrs Williams retired to the House of Lords as Baroness Williams of Crosby.
But the impact of her Gang of Four was enduring.
Their revolt, seen as treachery by fellow Labour MPs at the time, forced a titanic struggle within the Labour movement between militant extremists and moderates led by Neil Kinnock and John Smith.
It paved the way for Peter Mandelson, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair to launch New Labour and win three successive election victories.
Their stand against what was described as the “Loony Left” could offer a lesson to today’s faction-riddled Labour Party and its hapless leader, Sir Keir Starmer.
But there was more to the formidable Shirley Williams than the SDP. She made an even greater impact on British life as Education Secretary, with the destruction of grammar schools and the creation of the comprehensive system.
Her policy was applauded by the Left as an end to allegedly “privileged” education for middle-class children.
But the comprehensive doctrine of “all must have prizes” and contempt for elite scholarship spelled disaster for millions of children amid a collapse in literacy and maths. To quote Downing Street hatchet man Alastair Campbell, many were “bog standard”.
Along with many other Labour figures — including Tony Blair and Diane Abbott — Shirley made sure her own daughter avoided a similar fate, moving to the catchment area of the state-subsidised Godol-phin and Latymer School, which later went private.
As a youngster she took part in a screen test to play Velvet Brown in the 1944 film National Velvet but the role went to Elizabeth Taylor.
Yet in her heyday, Shirley cut a dowdy figure, left her hair unwashed and was famously unpunctual.
But Baroness Williams of Crosby enjoyed a far more colourful life away from politics.
Her drab appearance in later life gave no clue to her rather racy youth as the “most celebrated female under-graduate at Oxford”.
Blonde and blue-eyed, with a sexy, husky voice, there was no hint of her future “bag lady” image.
A brilliant scholar, she sailed into Oxford and was immediately picked out as a rising political star. Shirley — “Poppy” to her doting parents — was already famous as the daughter of celebrated historian and feminist Vera Brittain.
Brittain wrote the blockbuster Testament Of Youth, the bestseller about a generation of young men slaughtered in World War One.
Unlike Margaret Thatcher, who attended the same Somerville College, glamorous Shirley attracted men like moths to a flame.
She received a dozen marriage proposals and fell head over heels in love with future head of British Rail Peter Parker. Another boyfriend was four-minute miler Roger Bannister.
In the end she chose acid-tongued Oxford don Bernard Williams, who she divorced for his tendency to tell people off.
A brilliant student of politics, philosophy and economics, she was tipped as Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, only to be pipped at the post by Margaret Thatcher.
Friends recall she spent her days as chairman of the university Labour Party and her nights dancing, flirting and occasionally “skinny dipping” with friends at the seaside.
Her mother pleaded with her tutor to persuade Shirley to go to bed early. “Shirley is terribly handicapped by her popularity and at the mercy of her friends,” wrote Vera Britain.
“There are about 300 of them Each thinks he or she is the only one, and persuades Shirley it’s her moral duty to spend just one day in each year with him or her!”
Her husband Bernard observed: “She wants to be liked by everyone, even those she dislikes.”
The couple campaigned together for her first parliamentary seat as a Labour candidate. She was adopted by Harwich at 22, making her the youngest ever candidate.
At a rally in the Royal Albert Hall in 1959 racist hecklers began causing trouble.
“Shirley punched a large man several times in the stomach, only to see Bernard receive a crack on the nose and go flying over a row of chairs,” recalled one participant.
Shirley, who opposed gay marriage, was elected as Labour MP for Hitchin in 1964 and was almost immediately promoted to ministerial rank.
Eminent figures of the day, broadcasters Robin Day and Robert Robinson, applauded her “beauty and her brilliance”.
She appeared 58 times on the political debate show Question Time, hosted by Day in the 1980s.
She served as Minister for Education and Science and for Home Affairs and served as Shadow Home Secretary.
But she will be remembered not simply for her intellectual brilliance but for her kindness and enduring good nature — rare as hens’ teeth in politics.
