women and men working in partnership
The Team
Baroness Williams of Crosby
Baroness Williams is Foreign Affairs spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords.
She serves on the International Advisory Councils of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Moscow School of
Political Studies, and the International Management Institute of Kyiv, Ukraine.Daughter of political scientist and philosopher Sir George Catlin and novelist Vera Brittain, Shirley Williams entered Parliament in 1964 as a member of the Labour party.
She was elected to the House of Commons in 1964 as the Labour Member for Hitchin.
In 1967 she became Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science; between 1970 and 1974 she was opposition spokesperson for social services, home affairs, and then prices.
In 1974 she entered the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection, and in 1976 became Secretary of State for Education and Science and Paymaster-General.
She was a member of the National Executive of the Labour Party from 1970 to 1981. She co-founded the SDP in 1981 and was re-elected as a SDP member of Parliament in 1981-83. She was elected as the party's first President in 1982 and was re-elected in 1984 and 1986. In 1993 she was created a life peer.
Baroness Williams is:
- A Member of the House of Lords, the Upper Chamber of the British Parliament.
- Public Service Professor of Electoral Politics at Harvard University's John F Kennedy School of Government.
- Director and co-founder of "Project Liberty," a multilateral project which aided emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe.
- Her published work includes Politics is for People (Harvard University Press, 1981), A Job to Live (Penguin, 1985), Youth Without Work (OECD Study, 1981), the broadcast political diary Snakes and Ladders (Women's Hour, BBC Publications, 1996) and Ambition & Beyond: Career Paths of American Politicians (1993) co-edited with Edward L. Lasher, Jr.
- In 1980, she hosted the BBC-TV series Shirley Williams in Conversation and in 1988, for Radio Four she produced Women in the House. Williams is an expert on issues related to the European Union, Central and Eastern Europe, North American politics, and careers in elective politics.
- She is married to Richard Neustadt and has four adult children.