Brum’s women MPs – the long and the short of it...
Continues his look at the women who helped shape the politics of the Second City
TODAY’S column in this irregular chronological series on Birmingham’s women MPs happens to couple the longest- and shortest-serving of those with completed parliamentary careers – in, for me personally, a slightly odd way.
Longest serving has been Dame Jill Knight, who for over half her 31 Commons’ years was my own Edgbaston Conservative MP, but whom I never had occasion to meet.
By contrast, Doris Fisher, as she then was – before also entering the House of Lords as Baroness Fisher of Rednal – was Ladywood’s Labour MP for just the shortened 1970-74 Parliament. But I once had her all to myself, in a Palace of Westminster interview room, for 90 minutes!
No, stop it; it wasn’t THAT spicy! I was a ‘researcher’ on an extravagantly financed US project involving four of us interviewing, at length, eventually 521 of the then 630 MPs.
It was challenging, hugely educative, produced mountains of data, and eventually a 500-page book, Westminster’s World – the massive drawback being that the interviews were very tightly structured.
So, instead of having 90 minutes’ tolerably relaxed open-ended conversation with Doris Fisher MP, I had to keep almost stopping her in full flow to present her with another set of tick boxes to complete.
After which I never saw her to talk with again –definitely my loss!
DAME JILL KNIGHT (1923-2022)
Lady or Baroness Knight of Collingtree, as obituarists variously named her, died just last April.
Inevitably, therefore, the following few paragraphs will read as micro-pickings from those far more extensive accounts.
First, why not Baroness K of Edgbaston, given she had been its MP for over 30 years when the ennoblement arrived?
Because “Collingtree in the County of Northamptonshire” was where she moved to in 1947, newly married after the war, and later served for ten obviously formative years on Northampton Borough Council.
She also contested the 1959 and 1964 General Elections there, before getting selected – the biggest hurdle in those misogynistic times – then very comfortably winning in Edgbaston, vacated by the death of Dame Edith Pitt.
It was Edgbaston’s first ‘three-horse race’ since 1945 and Knight’s first of eight mainly comfortable victories, the more remarkable for what would happen to her seat immediately she retired – lost to Labour and yet to be regained – and also given the passionate revulsion aroused by some of her highly publicised campaigning.
One facet of her reputation was indeed the large, jovial, attention-seeking woman in gaudy floral dresses.
Another, though, was “as a homophobic bigot” (not me; The Times obituary), earned by her successful introduction of a key amending clause to Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act – banning local
authorities and schools from intentionally promoting the acceptability of lesbian and gay relationships.
At the peak of the public HIV/ AIDS stigmatisation of gay and bisexual men, the late insertion lacked hard evidence of actual school practice, made unsubstantiated claims, would produce no successful prosecutions, and, many teachers would say, was counterproductive – though it did prompt the creation of Stonewall, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights charity.
In short, Section 28 looked both prejudiced and, as Knight herself conceded, 15 years after the Act’s 2003 repeal, politically opportunistic.
Her concern had been the “wellbeing of
children” and, if it hadn’t turned out that way, then she was belatedly sorry.
However, what she herself almost certainly wouldn’t have described as her ‘Sectional technique’ – adding clauses to existing Bills, rather than coming up with new ones – would enable her to claim having got more Private Members legislation through Parliament than anyone else.
Other causes included child-resistant packaging for medicines and a British mother’s right to pass on her nationality to children born abroad.
On retiring as MP in 1997, she became a Life Peer and thereby the first woman to serve in Parliament continuously for more than 50 years.
It being impossible satisfactorily to summarise a half-century career in a half-column, I’ll stop trying.
DORIS FISHER (1919-2005)
Doris Fisher too clocked up an impressive
half-century of public service, comprising in her case 20 years as a Birmingham councillor, four as Ladywood MP, and 30 as Baroness Fisher of Rednal.
Politicians, even in today’s media-dominated era, aren’t primarily and shouldn’t be expected to be entertainers. Try too hard, like our present PM, and it’s painful. 2021 Budget speech example: “Completing the spending review in such challenging circumstances was a tall order” – comedian-length pause – “and thankfully we had just the man for the job!” Cringe!
True, Fisher would never have been in the position to deliver a Budget speech. Even so, I was surprised to read an obituarist’s verdict that “She certainly never attempted to make her speeches interesting”, and my 90 minutesworth I recall as not just interesting but insightful.
Also frustrating, though, as I was barely able to mention the famous/infamous 1969 Ladywood by-election.
It was acrimoniously contested by three city councillors – including the easy winner, Wallace Lawler, the Liberals’ exceptional ‘pavement politician’ campaigner – plus the British Movement’s notorious neo-Nazi, Colin Jordan.
Fisher finished a distant second, victim of the Labour Government’s perceived attack on the power of trade unions.
Revenge in this instance, though, was swift as well as sweet, as she defeated Lawler in the June 1970 General Election with nearly 1,000 votes to spare.
But also comparatively short-lived, for, while the Ladywood ward retained its name in the 1974 boundary redistribution, future broadcaster Brian Walden’s All Saints seat was abolished, and he got the proverbial ‘nod’ of the selectors – leaving Baroness Fisher of Rednal to begin the next chapter of her political life in the so-called ‘other place’.
One facet of her reputation was indeed the large, jovial, attention-seeking woman in gaudy floral dresses...