The British Library has acquired the archive of Shirley Williams, one of the most influential figures in British social democracy in the second half of the 20th century, who was known affectionately as “Shirl the Pearl” by her admirers. Lady Williams, who died aged 90 in 2021, was a Labour cabinet minister in the 1970s and was later a member of the “Gang of Four” that broke away from the Labour party to form the Social Democratic party (SDP). Thirty-five boxes of papers, notebooks, letters, draft speeches and photographs from Williams’s 60-year career in public life have been given to the British Library by her daughter, Rebecca Williams, a former government lawyer. “They deal with all aspects of her life. It’s Shirley in a box, essentially,” said Jonathan Pledge, the lead curator of contemporary archives, politics and public life at the British Library.
Highlights from the archive will be displayed at the library until February next year. The archive will then be catalogued before being made available through the library’s reading rooms. Among the photographs are several family snaps, showing Williams as a confident child. Her parents, Vera Brittain, the celebrated pacifist, and George Catlin, a political scientist, encouraged their daughter to believe there were no barriers to what she might achieve. There is also a telegram from her first husband, the philosopher Bernard Williams, after Williams won the historic Crosby byelection for the newly formed SDP in 1981, when she overturned a Conservative majority of nearly 20,000. Referring to an area of the constituency and his second wife’s mother, he said: “Fact that Blundellsands [is the] birthplace of Patricia’s mother not encouraging to radical cause. Splendid achievement to overcome this. Every best wish, famous victory both personal and social democratic. love Bernard.” Williams was the first member of the Gang of Four – Williams, Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers – to be elected. The group had launched the SDP earlier that year in protest at the Labour party’s move to the left. The new party was greeted with enthusiasm by the electorate, and there were extravagant hopes that it would “break the mould” of British politics. But Williams lost Crosby two years later when the SDP crashed as a political force. It later merged with the Liberal party to become the Liberal Democrats. Earlier, in the late 1960s, when Williams was Labour’s education minister, she abolished the socially divisive 11-plus exam and ushered in more comprehensive schools. She was made a life peer in 1993, and served as the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords from 2001 to 2004. After her death, Tony Blair described Williams as an “immense figure of progressive politics through the decades, consistent in her commitment to equality, to social justice, to liberal social democratic values and to internationalism”. Pledge said: “She was active in what was an extremely transformative period of British politics. And she was there during the social and political shifts in postwar Britain.” Contemporary political archives were “important in telling us where we’ve come from, how our lives have been shaped. For example, comprehensive education changed the social landscape of Britain,” he said. “There were very few women in parliament when Shirley Williams was first elected in 1964. We see some of the photos of the cabinet and it’s all men, except for Shirley Williams. She had to be tough to survive in the political world.” Last year, Rebecca Williams wrote to the Guardian as details of Downing Street parties during lockdown were emerging. In accordance with restrictions at the time, her mother’s funeral had been limited to 30 people and 40 minutes, she said. “My mother, a lifelong public servant of the utmost integrity, must be turning in her grave at this country’s current pitiful state of governance,” she said. “While I miss her every day, I am glad she is not alive to see the cynical abandonment of the foundations of our democracy to which she devoted her life.” Shirley Williams: A Life in Politics is at the British Libraries’ treasures gallery from 15 September until 25 February