A century of women MPs – the Liberal roll of honour
December 2018 marks the centenary of women being able to stand for election to Parliament. The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act was passed just a few weeks before the general election held on 14th December 1918 so only sixteen women candidates stood. Three years later the first Liberal woman MP was elected. Margaret Wintringham was elected in a by election in September 1921, succeeding her deceased husband in the Louth constituency of Lincolnshire. She followed the Tory Nancy Astor as the second woman to take her seat in the House of Commons. Wintringham had served as a magistrate and school board member. Her local government and community activity later became a familiar path for many Liberal and Liberal Democrat MPs.
Wintringham held her seat in the 1923 general election at which Vera Woodhouse, Lady Terrington, was also elected. Terrington defeated the sitting Tory MP for Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. Both Wintringham and Terrington were swept away in the Liberal meltdown at the 1924 general election.
The third woman to be elected as a Liberal MP was Hilda Runciman. She gained St Ives from the Tories in a by-election in March 1928. Her tenure was from the start intended to be short lived as her husband, the former cabinet minister Walter Runciman, MP for Swansea West, had already been lined up to switch to St Ives at the next general election. Walter held St Ives in the 1929 election but Hilda was narrowly defeated at Tavistock. It was at the 1929 election that arguably the most famous female Liberal MP was elected. Megan Lloyd George was the youngest child of David Lloyd George. She won the usually safe Liberal constituency of Anglesey, across the Menai Straits from her father’s seat. She held the constituency for the next four general elections before losing to Labour in 1951. She returned to the House in 1957, this time as a Labour MP, sitting until her death in 1966.
It was to be another thirty years before another woman was elected in the liberal tradition. Shirley Williams vies with Megan Lloyd George for the title of most famous liberal woman. Her career was the mirror of Megan’s, starting as a Labour MP in 1964 (and thus a Commons colleague of Megan) before becoming one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party in 1981. She was the first person to be elected as an SDP MP, winning the Crosby by election in November 1981. The constituency was greatly altered by boundary changes and she lost in 1983. She became a Liberal Democrat Peer in 1993 and led the party in the House of Lords from 2001 to 2004.
The SDP-Liberal Alliance won a further two seats at by elections with women candidates. Elizabeth Shields won Ryedale for the Liberals and Rosie Barnes won Greenwich for the SDP, a by election in which I helped for a day. Shields lost her seat at the 1987 general election. Barnes held Greenwich but stayed with David Owen in the rump of the SDP when the parties merged in 1988. She lost as an independent SDP candidate in 1992, when the Lib Dems gave her a free run.
The Liberal Democrats from 1988 have elected 21 women MPs but representation has always been a small proportion of the parliamentary party. The highest number was 10 out of the 62 elected in the 2005 general election. Representation shrunk from that high point, more as a result of the party losing seats than unrepresentative selections as women candidates were selected in many target seats (several where a male MP was retiring) in both the 2010 and 2015 general elections. The 2015 election saw an all-male parliamentary party of just eight but it was joined by Sarah Olney, victor of the November 2016 Richmond Park by election. In the snap election of June 2017 Olney lost by just 45 votes but three seats were gained by new women candidates and Jo Swinson regained the seat she had lost in 2015, becoming the party’s Deputy Leader. The current parliamentary party of 12 is thus one third female, the highest ever proportion.
The British legislature with the best record for electing women of all parties, including the Liberal Democrats, is the National Assembly for Wales. The first election in 1999 saw three Liberal Democrat women elected, half of the party’s group. The Scottish Parliament has been less fertile ground for Lib Dem women, with just three elected since 1999, none in the most recent elections. Lloyd George’s partition of Ireland had created the Northern Ireland House of Commons, housed in the grand new buildings at Stormont. The NI Liberal Party only managed one victory in the 50 years of devolved rule, when Sheelagh Murnaghan won a by election in 1961 to represent Queens University, Belfast. The graduate franchise was abolished in 1969. The Alliance Party is now the liberal sister party in Northern Ireland. Six women have been elected since devolved rule was restored in 1998. One of them is Naomi Long, who was also elected as the Westminster MP for Belfast East in 2010. Long chose to sit on the opposition benches rather than support the Lib Dems in the coalition government but remained on good terms with the party.
Finally, the Liberal Democrats have been able to elect 8 women to the European Parliament. The party list system of PR meant that the party was able to “zip” its candidate lists for the first elections under PR in 1999. This led to the successful election of five women, half of the seats won. At the 2014 election the party was left with just one MEP, Catherine Bearder in the south east region of England. At the time of writing she will be the last Lib Dem MEP…
Below I list all the women elected in the liberal tradition since 1918:
House of Commons
1 Margaret Wintringham Louth 1921 – 1924 Liberal
2 Lady Vera Terrington Wycombe 1923 – 1924 Liberal
3 Hilda Runciman St Ives 1928 – 1929 Liberal
4 Lady Megan Lloyd George Anglesey 1929 – 1951 Liberal
5 Shirley Williams # Crosby 1981 – 1983 SDP
6 Elizabeth Shields Ryedale 1986 – 1987 Liberal
7 Rosie Barnes Greenwich 1987 – 1992 SDP, from 1988 Ind SDP
8 Ray Michie Argyll & Bute 1987 – 2001 Liberal then LD
9 Elizabeth Lynne Rochdale 1992 – 1997 LD
10 Diana Maddock # Christchurch 1993 – 1997 LD
11 Jackie Ballard Taunton 1997 – 2001 LD
12 Jenny Tonge # Richmond Park 1997 – 2005 LD
13 Sandra Gidley Romsey 2000 – 2010 LD
14 Annette Brooke Mid Dorset 2001 – 2015 LD and North Poole
15 Sue Doughty Guildford 2001 – 2005 LD
16 Patsy Calton Cheadle 2001 – 2005 LD Died after re-election in 2005
17 Sarah Teather Brent East 2003 – 2015 LD Brent Central from 2010
18 Lorely Burt # Solihull 2005 – 2015 LD
19 Julia Goldsworthy Falmouth 2005 – 2010 LD and Camborne
20 Lynne Featherstone # Hornsey and 2005 – 2015 LD Wood Green
21 Jenny Willott Cardiff Central 2005 – 2015 LD
22 Jo Swinson East Dumbarton 2005 – 2015 LD 2017 –
23 Susan Kramer # Richmond Park 2005 – 2010 LD
24 Tessa Munt Wells 2010 – 2015 LD
24a Naomi Long Belfast East 2010 – 2015 Alliance Party of Northern Ireland
25 Sarah Olney Richmond Park 2016 – 2017 LD
26 Wera Hobhouse Bath 2017 – LD
27 Layla Moran Oxford West 2017 – LD and Abingdon
28 Christine Jardine Edinburgh West 2017 – LD
Senedd (National Assembly for Wales)
1 Jenny Randerson # Cardiff Central 1999 – 2011 LD
2 Kirsty Williams Brecon & Radnor 1999 – LD
3 Christine Humphreys # North Wales 1999 – 2001 LD resigned list seat
4 Eleanor Burnham North Wales 2001 – 2011 LD succeeded Humphreys
5 Veronica German SE Wales 2010 – 2011 LD
6 Eluned Parrott S Wales Central 2011 – 2016 LD
Scottish Parliament
1 Nora Radcliffe Gordon 1999 – 2007 LD
2 Margaret Smith Edinburgh W 1999 – 2011 LD
3 Alison McInnes NE Scotland 2007 – 2016` LD
Northern Ireland House of Commons (1921-1971) and Assembly
1 Sheelagh Murnaghan QUB 1961 – 1969
2 Eileen Bell North Down 1998 – 2007 Alliance
3 Naomi Long Belfast East 1998 – 2010 Alliance 2016 –
4 Anna Lo Belfast South 2007 – 2016 Alliance
5 Judith Cochrane Belfast East 2011 – 2016 Alliance
6 Kellie Armstrong Strangford 2016 – Alliance
7 Paula Bradford Belfast South 2016 – Alliance
European Parliament
1 Elspeth Attwool Scotland 1999 – 2009 LD
2 Sarah Ludford # London 1999 – 2014 LD
3 Elizabeth Lynne West Midlands 1999 – 2012 LD resigned
4 Emma Nicholson** # SE England 1999 – 2009 LD
5 Diana Wallis Yorkshire 1999 – 2012 LD resigned
6 Sharon Bowles # SE England 2005 – 2014 LD
7 Catherine Bearder SE England 2009 – LD
8 Rebecca Taylor Yorkshire 2012 – 2014 LD succeeded Wallis
# – became a member of the House of Lords
**Note
Emma Nicolson was elected as the Conservative MP for Torridge and West Devon in 1987. She defected to the Liberal Democrats during the Christmas recess in 1995 but did not defend her seat at the 1997 election, which was won by the Lib Dem John Burnett. She was made a Lib Dem Peer in November 1997. She was elected as MEP for the South East of England in 1999, standing down in 2009 and returning to the Lords. In 2016 she somewhat bizarrely defected back to the Conservatives, despite the party’s slide into ever more strident Euro-scepticism.
