Betty Lockwood, Baroness Lockwood

Betty Lockwood, Baroness Lockwood (born 22 January 1924), is a Labour Party activist. On a national and international level she has been heavily involved in promoting equal opportunities for women, and has supported many organizations in her native Yorkshire.

Biography

Born in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, the daughter of Arthur Lockwood, a coal miner, Betty Lockwood followed an unconventional route into politics. She left Eastborough Girls School at 14, then continued her studies at night school. With the support of a Mary MacArthur scholarship for working women, she read economics and politics at Ruskin College in Oxford.

After attending university she became active in the Labour Party as regional women's organiser for Yorkshire, then moved to London as women's officer. She campaigned for equal pay and was instrumental in the creation of the Equal Pay Act 1970.

From 1975 to 1983 she served as the first chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission and was chair of the European Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men from 1982-83. In 1978 she was elevated to a life peerage as Baroness Lockwood, of Dewsbury in the County of West Yorkshire.

Her connections with the University of Bradford date back to 1983, when she became a member of its council and she served as Chancellor of the university from 1997, being succeeded in 2005 by the former Pakistan international cricketer and politician Imran Khan.

She is currently Chair of the National Coal Mining Museum for England. She has received four honorary doctorates and is President of the Yorkshire Arthritis Research Campaign. She is also a member of Soroptimist International, a group working to advance the status of women and is a patron of the Born in Bradford research project. She lists her hobbies as enjoying the Yorkshire Dales and opera.

She married Lieutenant-Colonel Cedric Hall in 1978. He died in 1988.

External links

* [http://www.dodonline.co.uk/engine.asp?lev1=4&lev2=38&menu=81&biog=y&id=26997 Political Biography of members of the House of Lords]
* [http://www.soroptimistinternational.org Homepage of Soroptimist International]