Eirene White, Baroness White

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Eirene Lloyd White, Baroness White , nee Jones , (* 7. November 1909 in Belfast ; † 23. December 1999 in Abergavenny , Monmouthshire , Wales ) was a British civil servant , journalist and politician of the Labor Party . Since 1970 she was a Life Peeress member of the House of Lords .

Life

Family and education

Eirene Lloyd Jones was born in the Anwylfan district, on St Johns Avenue, Belfast as the eldest child and only daughter of Thomas Jones (1870-1955), commonly known as TJ , and his wife Eirene Theodora Lloyd († 1935). Her father was a civil servant and a teacher . In 1910 the family moved back to Wales and settled in Barry . There White first attended elementary school. Her father commuted between Barry and London for professional reasons. White therefore first attended another primary school in the Upper Norwood district of South London. In 1919 the family moved permanently to London, where Eirene White then went to St Paul's Girls' School . She received a scholarship and studied philosophy , political science and economics at Somerville College of Oxford University . After graduating in 1932, she made a trip to Europe, lived for some time in Heidelberg and then went to the United States . There she worked in visitor care at the New York Public Library . During this time, she became a staunch opponent of racial discrimination in the United States after she was denied access to the same restaurant as Paul Robeson .

From 1933 to 1937, on her return to Great Britain, she was a civil servant in the British Ministry of Labor. From 1933 to 1939 she worked as a social worker with housing policy and the problems of the homeless . At the beginning of the Second World War Eirene Jones joined the Women's Voluntary Service (WRVS) and became its Regional Secretary for Wales . She worked for the Women's Voluntary Service in Cardiff from 1939 to 1941 . She was hired by the Department of Labor to train workers, especially women, in Wales to work in war and armaments factories. From 1941 to 1945 she was again a civil servant in the British Department of Labor. She worked as a welfare officer in South Wales . After the Second World War, she was political correspondent for the British newspaper Manchester Evening News from 1945 to 1949 . She was one of the first political correspondents in Britain and the first local newspaper journalist to have access to the London press for coverage from the House of Commons . She also worked for the BBC .

Political career

In the British general election in 1945 , she ran unsuccessfully for the Labor Party in the Flintshire constituency . She just lost to Nigel Birch . In the British general election in 1950 , she was elected Member of Parliament for the Labor Party in the constituency of East Flintshire and became a member of the House of Commons. In the British House of Commons, she was one of the first women MPs for Wales. White defended her constituency in the further general election, once very narrowly with a lead of only 72 votes. In the British general election in 1970 she did not run for re-election and left the lower house.

In 1951 she brought a controversial Private Member's Bill in the British House of Commons , the Matrimonial Causes Bill. The bill stipulated that the breakdown of a marriage , combined with a separation of at least 7 years of the spouses, should constitute a reason for a divorce . The second reading in the British House of Commons followed in March 1951. White eventually withdrew her potentially successful bill after receiving assurances from the government that a Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce would be set up to reform marriage and family law. Later British family laws, which liberalized divorce law , made multiple use of White's original drafts. Hugh Gaitskell made white, behind Anthony Greenwood , Deputy Opposition spokeswoman for the Labor Party in the areas of training and education . In 1961 she held a press conference with Margaret Thatcher , in which she pointed out the lack of childcare facilities and financial aid for preschoolers in high-rise housing estates.

When the Labor Party took over government with Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1964 , White became Parliamentary Under Secretary in the Colonial Office . She traveled extensively in the former British colonies . She held talks with residents and government officials of the Fiji Islands in preparation for the Fiji Constitutional Conference in 1965 and visited Gibraltar to support the local government and people of Gibraltar when Spain tried to tighten border regulations. In 1966 she became Minister of State in the Foreign Office . Her relationship with the then British Foreign Minister Georg Brown remained distant. Committed to the international law traditions of the United Nations , she campaigned for the political independence of Rhodesia , for which she received criticism from within the party. During the government reshuffle in 1967, she was transferred to the Welsh Office ; there she was Minister of State until 1970 .

Party career

In 1947 she became a member of the Labor Party's National Executive Committee (NEC), in the party's women's section. Annoyed by internal fighting between the party's left and right wing, she resigned from the party executive committee in 1953. In 1959 she was again a member of the National Executive Committee and remained so until 1972. She was temporarily also chairman of the NEC (1968-1969). She was also party chairman (chairman) of the Labor Party (1968-1969).

Membership in the House of Lords

On October 12, 1970, White was named a Life Peeress and became a member of the House of Lords ; she was entitled Baroness White , of Rhymney in the County of Monmouth . She gave her inaugural address on December 16, 1970.

White has served on various committees and special committees in the House of Lords. She was a member of the Special Committee on the European Communities ( Select Committee on the European Communities ), which was established after Britain joined the European Community. She was a member of the Main Committee of the House of Lords and chaired it from 1979 to 1982. She was also chairman of the Subcommittee on the Environment (Sub-committee on environmental questions). From 1979 to 1989 she was Deputy Lord Speaker (Deputy Speaker) of the House of Lords.

In the Hansard , White's contributions to the House of Lords from 1970 to 1996 are documented. Until 1995 White attended the meetings of the House of Lords regularly; after that their presence decreased. In July 1996, she made a brief objection in the context of a debate on constitutional issues ( The Constitution ) for the last time. In mid-1997, shortly after the Labor Party came into power in May 1997, she attended a number of meetings in the House of Lords.

Further offices and honors

White became Chairman of the Fabian Society in 1958 ; she held the office in 1958/1959. She served as governor on the board of the British Film Institute and on the board of the Trade Films Council . In later years she was president ( President ) of Coleg Harlech (1974-1984) and Governor of the National Library of Wales . She was further chairman ( chairman ) of the State Land Authority for Wales (1976-1980), Deputy. Chairman ( Deputy Chairman ) of metrication Board (1972-1976) and member of the Royal Commission on Environment Pollution (1974-1981). She was also chair of the Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution at Sea (1974–1978).

She received honorary doctorates from the University of Wales (1979) and Queen's University Belfast (1981). In 1983 she was awarded the honorary degree as Doctor of Laws (LLD) from the University of Bath in the 1983rd

Private and death

In 1948 she married her professional colleague, the divorced House of Commons correspondent, journalist and lobbyist John Cameron White († 1968), whom she had met at a press reception at 10 Downing Street .

She wrote the biography The Ladies of Gregynog about the two Welsh art collectors Gwendoline and Margaret Davies ; the book was first published in 1985.

In the late 1990s, White retired from public life. From then on she lived in Abergavenny, most recently in a retirement and nursing home, the Trebencyn Park Nursing Home, where she also died in December 1999 at the age of 90. The funeral service for White was held at St. Mary's Priory Church in Abergavenny. Her remains were cremated in a private ceremony in the Croesyceiliog Crematorium in Cwmbrân . Her ashes were later scattered in Barry, where she grew up. On May 17, 2000, a memorial service for White was held at St Margaret's Church in Westminster ; the address was given by John Morris, Baron Morris of Aberavon .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k White, Eirene Lloyd, Baroness White ; Biography in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography ; Retrieved November 25, 2013
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Eirene Lloyd Jones, Baroness White on thepeerage.com , accessed September 13, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Eirene White (Baroness White) ; Curriculum vitae (official website of the Center for Advancement of Women in Politics); Retrieved November 25, 2013
  4. ↑ MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES: PROPOSED CHARGES Text of the speech of December 16, 1970
  5. ↑ Honorary degree Official Inter presence of the University of Bath ; last accessed on November 25, 2013
  6. ↑ The Ladies of Gregynog ; The University of Chicago Press Books; Retrieved November 25, 2013
personal data
SURNAME White, Eirene, Baroness White
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jones, Eirene Lloyd (maiden name); White, Eirene (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British journalist and politician (Labor Party), Member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH November 7, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Belfast , Northern Ireland, UK
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1999
Place of death Abergavenny , Monmouthshire, Wales, United Kingdom