‘True trailblazer’ ShirleyWilliams dies
SHIRLEY Williams, the former Labour cabinet minister who broke away from the party to form the SDP, has died, her current party, the Liberal Democrats, has said. She was 90.
In a statement Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey paid tribute to Baroness Williams of Crosby as a “true trailblazer” who had inspired millions.
As a Labour minister, Lady Williams, served in the governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in the 1970s rising to become education secretary.
However in 1981, having become disillusioned with Labour’s drift to the left under Michael Foot, she was one of the original “Gang of Four” to leave the party to form the new centrist SDP.
Sir Ed said that her bravery continued to inspire Liberal Democrats to this day.
“Shirley has been an inspiration to millions, a Liberal lion and a true trailblazer”, he said. “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.”
Lady Williams first entered Parliament as a Labour MP in 1964. Originally seen as being on the left of the party, as education secretary in the 1970s she supported the comprehensive system and the abolition of grammar schools.
But by the turbulent years of the early 1980s, alarmed at the direction it was taking under Michael Foot, she joined David Owen, Roy Jenkins and Bill Rodgers in the new SDP in an attempt to “break the mould of British politics”.
She won Crosby for the SDP in a notable by-election, only to lose it two years later in the 1983 general election.
In 1993, she was made a life peer.