Meta Ramsay, Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale

Meta Ramsay, Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale

Margaret Mildred "Meta" Ramsay, Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (born July 12, 1936 ) is a British diplomat and politician of the Labor Party who has been a Life Peeress member of the House of Lords since 1996 .

Life

Diplomat and MI6 staff

After leaving school, Meta Ramsey studied at the University of Glasgow and at the University of Geneva Institute for International Studies and Development . In 1969 she joined the foreign service of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and worked there until 1991, during which time she was mainly the representative of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) at the foreign missions . After working at the embassy in Sweden , she was head of the MI6 mission in Finland , where she also played a key role in working with Oleg Antonowitsch Gordijewski , a colonel of the KGB who defected to the west .

After retiring from the civil service in 1991, she was active in various bodies of the Labor Party and was foreign policy advisor to the Labor Party leader at the time, John Smith , from July 1992 to May and, at the same time, a member of the Health Council of the London Borough of Lewisham between 1992 and 1994 . After that, she served from 1994 to 1995 as a special adviser to Jack Cunningham , who at the time in the shadow cabinet was Labor's "shadow minister" of Trade and Industry.

House of Lords

By a letters patent dated October 11, 1996, Meta Ramsay was raised to the British nobility as a life peeress with the title Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale , of Langside in the City of Glasgow . Shortly thereafter, she was introduced as a member of the House of Lords . In the House of Lords she belongs to the Labor Party faction .

In 1997 she was briefly a member of the House of Lords Committee on Intelligence and Security and from 1997 to 2001 Parliamentary Director of the ruling Labor Group ( Government Whip ). As such, she was spokesperson for Scotland from 1997 to 2001 and at the same time from 1997 to 1998 government spokesperson for culture, media and sport and health. In 1997 she was also a brief member of the British delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Baroness Ramsay, who was a member of the House of Lords Committee on Foreign Affairs and Europe from 1998 to 2001 and then again a member of the House of Lords Committee on Intelligence and Security from 2001 to 2006, acted as Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords from 2002 to 2008 . In 2002 she became the commander of the Finnish Order of the White Rose . Since 2003 she has also been a member of the British delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly .

She is also chairman of Labor Friends of Israel in the House of Lords and Chairman of the Trust Council of Kenneth Lindsay - Foundation and the Trust Council of the Wyndham Deedes Foundation. She is also active as Chair of the Development Council of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow .

Web links

• Entry on Parliament's homepage (accessed on November 26, 2012)
• Meta Ramsay in Hansard (English)