Mervyn Pike, Baroness Pike

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Irene Mervyn Parnicott Pike, Baroness Pike DBE ( September 16, 1918 - January 11, 2004 ) was a British Conservative Party politician who was a member of the House of Commons for 17 years and in 1974 as a Life Peeress based on the Life Peerages Act 1958 Became a member of the House of Lords .

Life

Studies, career and member of the House of Commons

Mervyn Pike completed after visiting the Hunmanby Hall in Yorkshire a degree in economics and social psychology at the University of Reading , which she graduated in 1941 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA). She then joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), the women 's auxiliary forces of the Royal Air Force (RAF), during the Second World War , and served in them until 1946. She then became the managing director of Clokie & Company , a member of her family Pottery, and ran this company until 1959.

In the general election on October 25, 1951 , she ran in the constituency of Pontefract just as unsuccessfully for a seat in the House of Commons as in the general election on May 26, 1955 in the constituency of Leek . After the mandate waiver by Anthony Nutting Mervyn Pike was a candidate of the Conservative Party in a by-election ( by-election ) in the constituency Melton first elected on 19 December 1956 as MPs in the House of Commons and represented that constituency more than 17 years until the general election on February 28, 1974 .

Junior Minister and opposition politician

In 1957, Mervyn Pike became Parliamentary Private Secretary to David Renton , who was first Minister of Power and then Parliamentary Undersecretary of State in the Home Office . It was then in 1959 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in place of Kenneth Thompson Deputy General postmistress ( Assistant Postmaster General appointed) and served in that role until it was replaced by Ray Mawby in March 1963 closest collaborator of Postmaster General Reginald Bevins and the only woman in this Function. In 1960 she was one of the only three women in Macmillan's enlarged government, along with Patricia Hornsby-Smith and Edith Pitt .

In March 1963 she was then Joint Parliamentary Undersecretary of State at the Home Office ( Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Home Office ) and was until October 1964, together with the incumbent also in this function Montague Woodhouse one of the closest advisers of Home Secretary ( Home Secretary ) Henry Brooke .

After the power loss of the conservative Tories in the general election of October 15, 1964 Mervyn Pike moved to the private sector and became director of the Tonbergbauunternehmens Watts, Blake & Bearne . At the same time she was spokeswoman for the opposition for health and social security and thus a member of the shadow cabinet of her party.

When the Conservative Party won the general election on June 18, 1970 and provided Edward Heath as Prime Minister, Mervyn Pike was surprisingly not reappointed to the cabinet.

House of Lords and other engagements

After leaving the House of Commons, Mervyn Pike was raised to the nobility by a letters patent dated May 15, 1974 as a Life Peeress with the title Baroness Pike , of Melton in the County of Leicestershire, and belonged to the nobility for nearly thirty years until her death House of Lords as a member. She then served as chairman of the Women's Royal Voluntary Service , a volunteer organization serving people in need in England , Scotland and Wales, from 1974 to 1981 . The prerequisite for assuming this function, for which she was nominated in July 1973 by the then Interior Minister Robert Carr , was the waiver of the mandate in the lower house.

When there was a debate in the UK Parliament in the mid-1970s about expanding family allowances and the child allowance system to benefit poorer populations through a single payment system, Baroness Pike advocated a simple form of negative income tax . According to this, parents who did not earn enough to claim their child allowance should receive the value of the allowance as a cash payment.

Subsequently, Baroness Pike, who was also appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1981, was Chair of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission from 1981 to 1985 . Before that, she was chair of its predecessor organization, the Advisory Committee of the Independent Broadcasting Authority .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Charles Roger Dod, Robert Phipps Dod: Dod's Parliamentary Companion , 2004, ISBN 0-905702-43-3 , p. 681
  2. ↑ Assistant Postmasters-General ( Memento from August 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Margaret Thatcher: Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography , 2013, ISBN 0-06-204945-3 , p. 1969
  4. ↑ Vanessa White: The Political Companion , 2002, ISBN 0-11-702270-5 , p. 545
  5. ^ The London Gazette, April 5, 1974
  6. ^ Katharine Bentley Beauman: Green Sleeves: The Story of WVS-WRVS , 1977, p. 166
  7. ↑ Simon James: British Government: A Reader in Policy Making , 2002, p. 108
personal data
SURNAME Pike, Mervyn, Baroness Pike
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pike, Irene Mervyn Parnicott, Baroness Pike (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1918
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 2004