IN January 1965 Judith Hart, then a Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Scottish Office, embarked on a tour of schools, colleges, hospitals and health centres in Glasgow, Stirlingshire, Fife, Edinburgh and Midlothian.
In Glasgow she said she was impressed by the “superb” new schools but remained “appalled” by the state of some older school buildings. She had a school meal at Cranhill Secondary and (above) visited St Roch’s R.C. Secondary. In Fife’s Woodmill Junior High she was served tea by pupils in the school’s special housewifery flat. “I have been getting a close-up picture of how the comprehensive educational system is working,” she said later. “The Government are anxious that this should go forward as fast as it can.”
Her tour also included hospitals in the Glasgow area, and she said afterwards that it was important to plan what part of geriatric care should be undertaken in hospitals and what part should be done on a community basis.
In April 1966, Hart was promoted to Minister of State at the Commonwealth Office, with particular responsibility for Rhodesia (as it was then known). “It was an inspired move to put Judith Hart in charge of Rhodesia,” Barbara Castle noted in her diary. Hart later served three terms as Minister for Overseas Development. Her name, says the Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, is “known and respected in remote corners of the least developed countries.”
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