Alice Bacon, Baroness Bacon

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Alice Martha Bacon, Bacon Baroness , CBE (* 10. September 1909 , according to other sources in 1910 or 1911, in Normanton , West Yorkshire , England ; † 24. March 1993 ibid) was a British politician of the Labor Party . Since 1970 she was a Life Peeress member of the House of Lords .

Life

Bacon was from West Yorkshire . She was the daughter of Benjamin Bacon and his wife Rose Hannah Bacon, b. Kingston, born. She had another brother, Leonard. The year of her birth varies between 1909 and 1911. Her father was a miner and a member of the County Council for the Labor Party. She attended Normanton Girls' High School and Stockwell Training College. She studied as an external student at London University . After completing her training, she worked as a teacher .

Bacon grew up in a family that was shaped by the Labor Party; Joining the Labor Party was almost a matter of course for Bacon. Her political talent was recognized early on; the British Labor politician Herbert Stanley Morrison was one of its supporters. In 1941 she became a member of the Women's Section of the National Executive Committee of the Labor Party. In her early thirties, she was one of the youngest Labor Party politicians to ever achieve such a key position.

In the British general election in 1945 , she was elected as a direct candidate for the Labor Party in the constituency of Leeds North East and became a Member of Parliament for the Labor Party in the House of Commons . Bacon then represented the constituency of Leeds for almost a quarter of a century. After a reorganization of the constituencies in the British general election in 1955 , she ran from then on for the constituency of Leeds South East. She represented this constituency as a member of parliament until 1970; in the British general election in 1970 she did not run. Her political companions in the Leeds constituency included Hugh Gaitskell , Denis Healey and trade unionist Charles Pannell , later Baron Pannell of the City of Leeds. Her emotional speech, given in 1963 at the House of Commons on the death of Hugh Gaitskill, caused a sensation; In her speech she also spoke of the dark side and social grievances in Leeds.

Until 1970 she was a member of the Party Presidium (National Executive Committee) of the Labor Party; 1950–1951 she was chairwoman of the party presidium. In 1951 she was chairman of the Labor Party Conference in Scarborough .

In 1964 she was Minister of State (Minister of State) in the Home Office . She held this office under Frank Soskice and Roy Jenkins until 1967 in the government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson . From 1967 to 1970 she was Minister of State in the Department of Education and Science.

In 1953, Bacon was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire . In 1966 she became a member of the Privy Council . In 1974 she was Deputy Lieutenant of West Yorkshire. In 1972 she received an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Leeds .

Bacon was unmarried. She spent her retirement in Leeds. She died in March 1993 at the age of 81.

Membership in the House of Lords

On October 14, 1970, Bacon was made a life peer and was thus considered a member of the British nobility . At the same time she became a member of the House of Lords . She was entitled Baroness Bacon , of the City of Leeds and of Normanton in the West Riding of the County of York .

She gave her inaugural address on November 10, 1970.

The Hansard documents Bacon's contributions to the House of Lords from 1970 to 1986. On January 21, 1986, she spoke for the last time in the debate on Stanley Royd Hospital: Food Poisoning Report .

Political positions

Bacon belonged to the “realpolitical” wing of the Labor Party. She represented a practical socialism characterized by common sense and the feasible . She rejected ideological indoctrination by the left wing of the party as well as influences from the communists or Trotskyists . She saw herself as a “pragmatic mediator and moderator”.

According to her own self-image, Bacon was always more of a party politician than a national politician. During her membership in the House of Lords she withdrew more and more from active politics, especially after the death of Charles Pannell in 1974. The House of Lords seemed to Bacon unsuitable for the implementation of her political goals. From then on she was mainly involved in the social and charitable area. She organized charity concerts, Christmas concerts and similar events, at which such artists and members of the British royal family performed. Merlyn Rees , Gaitskill's successor in the Leeds constituency, sparked her interest in charity work in Northern Ireland , across religious boundaries.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Obituary: Baroness Bacon ; Obituary in: The Independent, March 29, 1993
  2. ↑ a b c d e Alice Martha Bacon, Baroness Bacon on thepeerage.com , accessed September 11, 2016.
  3. ↑ Bacon, Alice Martha - (1910-1993) ; Entry in the Lexicon Women of History ; Retrieved October 5, 2013
  4. ↑ a b c d Alice Martha BACON ( Memento from October 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Biography (information about the family)
  5. ↑ In the sources different information about the year of birth is given: The obituary in the newspaper The Independent states 1909; the Lexicon Women of History gives 1910. Other sources (The Peerage, Center for Advancement of Women in Politics) cite 1911.
  6. ↑ REORGANIZATION OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT Text of the speech of November 10, 1970
personal data
SURNAME Bacon, Alice, Baroness Bacon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bacon, Alice Martha (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Labor Party politician, Member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Normanton , West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 1993
Place of death Normanton , West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom