The 79-year-old, who is also Britain’s longest-serving female MP, was first elected to the House of Commons to represent Lincoln in 1974, when there were only 27 women MPs. There are now 220. After losing her seat five years later, she was elected by Derby South in 1983 and has been an MP ever since. After her announcement, she said on Saturday that she continues to believe in politics, despite the bitterness and violence faced by MPs in the age of social media. Labor MPs Joan Ruddock, Mo Mowlam, Margaret Beckett, Ann Taylor and Joan Lestor and (seated) Ann Clwyd and Jo Richardson, at their party’s Red Rose Letter Box presentation to get their views heard within the party, January 1988 Photo: PA She said she would still advise young women to get involved in politics, saying on Radio 4 Today: “I would not be fired because what I felt when I was thinking of becoming an MP is just as true today. “If you believe that things need to change and you want to have a reason to change them and you do not have the wealth and power, there is a very limited number of routes you can use and this is the largest of them.” Speaking on her first day in the House of Commons, she said she “vividly” remembers a police officer who knew she had opened the door and bowed when she arrived and said, “Welcome, madam.” “We were both winding up,” he said. Years later, in 2006, when then-Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed her foreign minister, she said she continued to face resistance because of her gender. “One of the senior women I knew told me, ‘I hope you understand that there are people in the State Department who believe that a woman should not be a foreign minister,’” she said. “And I’m sure that was right. “But I considered it their problem and not mine.” John Smith hugs his deputy, Margaret Beckett, after his sweeping victory in the Labor leadership competition in 1992. Photo: Louis Hollingsbee / PA Archive / PA Images After the death of John Smith in 1994, Beckett became Labor leader. But the party has never elected a woman leader, while the Conservatives have elected two women to the post. Asked what the problem was, she said it was luck. “There is so much luck in politics… And he just never was the right person at the right time.” He said he believed the late Barbara Castle should be Britain’s first female prime minister, “but it was never the right time.” Asked if he believed Keir Starmer could win the next election, he said the British public knew “how to work” the electoral system, citing the Labor slump in 1997 and the suspended parliaments in 2010 and 2017. “If they want “They can move mountains.” He added: “I do not say that I always believe in their wisdom, depending on their decision. “But I definitely believe in their ability and their ability to make that kind of change, if they decide it needs to.” Starmer paid tribute to Beckett’s term, calling her a “legend of our party.” He wrote on Twitter: “As the first female Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom and the first female Labor leader, she is a pioneer. “Margaret, thank you for everything you have given and achieved.” Labor deputy leader Angela Rayner said it was “inspirational”. “So many years of dedication to public service and better politics. What a woman! And what an inspiration Margaret is to all of us. “
