Dame Simone Prendergast
WHILEGIVINGmuch of her time t o charities, it was in politics that Dame Simone made her mark. She was the first woman to chair the Conservative Association of Westminster, and also the Greater London Conservative Association. As a friend of Dame Margaret Thatcher, who made her an OBE in 1981, she was permitted to use her Westminster flat for TV political broadcasts. She was appointed DBE for her political and public work in 1986.
Born Simone Ruth Laski, the younger daughter of Elaine and Norman Laski, business and politics were in her blood. Elaine was the youngest daughter of Michael Marks, founder of M&S and Norman was the cousin of Harold Laski, chairman of Labour’s NEC.
At the age of three she moved with her family to London, later attending Queen’s College in Harley Street, which evacuated to Brackley in Northamptonshire. Later, she and her sister Ann went to Cheltenham Ladies’ College.
She wrote home from her Swiss finishing school to complain that the food “was worse than at Cheltenham.” Fashion was her first port of call. She started working for the furrier Herbert Duncan and then for Digby Morton, a major couturier of that time. At the London School of Deportment she trained BOAC and BEA stewardesses, and in 1957, when the Queen visited North America, she went there to show American socialites how to curtsy.
As a young member of the M&S family, Simone became a sales trainee.
Her late husband Anthony, was then the youngest Lord Mayor of Westminster, (1968-9) but she felt responsible that his attempt to become a Conservative MP was unintentionally thwarted by her own punctilious dress sense.
Appearing together in Croydon before a Tory selection committee in 1969, she decided to dress “appropriately” – with hat and white gloves. But Anthony’s ambitions were thwarted at the first hurdle when she was told: “We don’t wear gloves down here!”
Dame Simone remained sceptical of those who selected potential MP candidates ever since. However, undeterred, she continued with her own political involvement in constituency politics, simultaneously throwing herself into a vast amount of charity work for various organisations. These included the Blond-McIndoe Research Trust in East Grinstead, set up to honour the eminent plastic surgeon, Sir Archibald McIndoe. After the death of her mother, Elaine Blond, Dame Simone took over the chairmanship of the Trust from 1986 to 2003.
Her first marriage, to Albert Kaplan, a Canadian doctor, ended in divorce. She married Anthony Prendergast, who worked in the London solicitors’ office that drew up the papers in 1959.
Her passion for politics was ignit- ed when Anthony was Lord Mayor of Westminster and she proved to be an elegant and capable Mayoress. She also encouraged left-leaning Tory MPs, like Christopher Tugenhat, to go to Brus- sels rather than further their political careers in Westminster.
While chairing a meeting at Caxton Hall, a protestor threw a bag of flour over former Prime Minister Ted Heath. “Not many people can say they shared a bag of flour with Mr Heath”, she said.
Her commitment to Tory politics nearly cost her life. During the 1984 bombing of the Brighton Grand Hotel the blast threw her out of her bed. A part-time Commissioner for Racial Equality, she was made a JP and Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London. She was also a retired member of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
She had considerable style – and enjoyed walking through her local streets of Westminster. She could be seen in narrow fitting Ferragamos, and sometimes practical M&S walking shoes. She told her leaving party, after stepping down as a JP that she was either referred to in court as “Your Royal Highness” or –“You silly old tart!”
Dame Simone worked tirelessly for the Central British Fund (now World Jewish Relief), to assist those in dire circumstances. She was patron and joint chair of WIZO’s finance committee, Commandant of the UK Jewish Lads’ and Girls’ Brigade, and a member of The Court of Patrons of The Royal College of Surgeons. She was a member of Westminster Synagogue. She is survived by her son Christopher.