Betty Boothroyd Autobiography: The Autobiography

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After gaining initial experience in national politics, she became interested in understanding American politics. Baroness Boothroyd insists Labour's Dennis Skinner walked out of the chamber before he was pushed after he branded a minister a "squirt" in 1992. In 1992, she started a new career as the speaker of the ‘House of Commons’ and became the first woman to achieve that feat. Harriet Harman, Labour’s former deputy leader said she hoped the next Commons speaker will be a woman.

She was chancellor of the OpenUniversity from 1994 until October 2006 and donated some of her personal papers to the University's archives. When members spoke for too long she had a habit of clumsily stifling a yawn as a signal of her displeasure and at the end of prime minister’s questions she inadvertently introduced what would become her catchphrase by declaring after one of her first sessions in the chair: “Time’s up! In 1979, she became a member of the Select committee on Foreign Affairs, until 1981, and of the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen, until 1 January 2000.The formation of the breakaway Social Democratic party in the early 80s partly lay in the “Walston group”, which had met in the former Labour minister’s apartments in the 70s, but Boothroyd fought within the Labour party, taking Shirley Williams’s seat on the party’s national executive in 1981, after the latter’s defection to found the new party. Photograph: Tom Stoddart Archive/Getty Images Betty Boothroyd MP, photographed at the House of Commons in 1992, the year she was elected speaker. She was herself a rightwing pro-European in party terms, yet despite her friendship with Walston and De Freitas, whose views she shared on almost everything, her politics were defined ultimately by party loyalty.

Running for the LabourParty, Boothroyd contested several seats – LeicesterSouthEast in 1957, Peterborough in 1959, NelsonandColne in 1968, and Rossendale in 1970 – before being elected MemberofParliament (MP) for WestBromwich in a by-election in 1973.Baroness Boothroyd presided over fiery debates on the European Union but described Nelson Mandela's state visit and parliament address in 1996 as "the most memorable moment of my time as Speaker".

The millrinds refer to her constituency of West Bromwich because they symbolise the industrial revolution, which is a dominant part of that area's history. To be the first woman speaker was truly groundbreaking and Betty certainly broke that glass ceiling with panache. It was a privilege to be in parliament during her tenure and to know her as the big-hearted and kind person she was. While in an interview in 2021, she said PMQs had "deteriorated a great deal in the last few years", adding: "It's not the quality that it used to be. In London she resumed her work as assistant to a number of Labour MPs before winning a seat on the Hammersmith Borough Council (1965–68).The level of cynicism about Parliament, and the accompanying alienation of many of the young from the democratic process, is troubling. She delivers a familiar complaint about New Labour's treatment of the Commons without demonstrating much understanding of why the Government's contempt for her palace is so widely shared by the voters.

She failed to win Leicester South East in a 1957 by-election and, two years later, was unsuccessful in Peterborough in the general election. She became the first woman to be made a Labour government whip when appointed assistant whip for the West Midlands after the October 1974 election. She became the favoured Labour candidate for the speakership, despite the seniority of Harold Walker, who by that time had been the deputy speaker for nine years, because she had some influential supporters on the Tory benches and because she represented a new chapter for parliamentary affairs.Ahead of delivering her farewell speech in the Commons, parliamentary staff lined up in a row to clap her out.