Obituary: Baroness Williams of Crosby, one of the 'Gang of Four' that launched the SDP heraldscotland.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from heraldscotland.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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.”
Shirley Williams, Labour Cabinet minister who left her party to help form the SDP – obituary
Conservatives blamed her for killing off grammar schools when at Education, but she was not the prime mover of a policy she warmly embraced
12 April 2021 • 4:32pm
Baroness Williams of Crosby (here as Shirley Williams in 1981): the SDP’s ‘collective leadership’ valued her popularity, warmth, intellect and enthusiasm
Baroness Williams of Crosby, who has died aged 90, was a controversial Education Secretary and one of the “Gang of Four” who left Labour to found the SDP, eventually becoming Liberal Democrat leader in the Lords.
Warm-hearted, principled, impulsive, dishevelled and infuriatingly unpunctual, Shirley Williams had great electoral appeal, yet never quite fulfilled her promise.
Former Hitchin and Stevenage MP Shirley Williams dies thecomet.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thecomet.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.