IN his memoirs, the late Jimmy Allison, one-time Scottish Organiser of the Labour Party, relates a story about the Labour MP, Judith Hart, from 1981. She was due to be reselected unopposed in her constituency. Fifteen minutes after the meeting was due to begin, “there was no sign of Judith. Someone phoned her home and discovered that she had forgotten to change her clock when the clocks had moved the night before. She arrived 45 minutes late and was duly reselected.”
Dame Judith, who died in 1991, was a former chairman of the Labour Party, and her government posts included Paymaster General and Minister of Social Security. She served for many years as Minister of Overseas Development. She was MP for Lanark from 1959 to 1983, and then for Clydesdale to 1987. She became a Dame of the British Empire in 1979, and a life peer in 1988. The above photograph was taken in 1967 as she inspected a model of proposed swimming baths at the East Kilbride Development Council stand at a trade fair.
Reacting to news of her death, Neil Kinnock said: “She was a woman of high abilities who will long be remembered and admired for her distinguished work to advance human rights and her tireless courage campaigning for the defeat of world poverty. Judith was a great internationalist.” Donald Dewar described her as and a “tireless fighter against poverty in the Third World.”
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