Shirley Williams obituary: Labour minister who quit to launch SDP Luke O Reilly
Baroness Williams of Crosby – better known as Shirley Williams – has died at the age of 90.
Ms Williams was one of the disenchanted ex-Labour Cabinet ministers who became the Gang of Four founders of the breakaway and short-lived Social Democratic Party.
She was a busy, breathless, tousle-haired intellectual who acquired an unwanted reputation for missing trains or going to the wrong venue for meetings. That was how she became affectionately known as Shilly Shally Shirley.
Once Lady Astor told her: “You will never get anywhere in politics with hair like that.”
Baroness Williams of Crosby – better known as Shirley Williams – was one of the disenchanted ex-Labour Cabinet ministers who became the Gang of Four founders of the breakaway and short-lived Social Democratic Party.
She was a busy, breathless, tousle-haired intellectual who acquired an unwanted reputation for missing trains or going to the wrong venue for meetings. That was how she became affectionately known as Shilly Shally Shirley.
Once Lady Astor told her: “You will never get anywhere in politics with hair like that.”
And although in her early political life she surprisingly regarded herself as left-of-centre in Labour terms, she came to be reviled by the party’s left who denounced her as a traitor to the movement after her defection to the SDP.