Renée Short

In the 1950s, Labour Party conferences were enlivened – though they did not need much enlivening in those raw and non-choreographed days – by the oratory of three galvanic redheads, Barbara Castle, Jo Richardson and Renée Short. Their fiery brand of well-informed socialism excited the Bevanite Left, and drove Hugh Gaitskell, Tony Crosland and Roy Jenkins to apoplexy.

One of Renée Short's nicknames in that decade was "La Pasionaria from St Albans". There was some dispute whether this was bestowed upon her by admirers – she was sponsored by the Transport and General Workers' Union – such as Jack Jones, who had been in the Spanish Civil War, or by Sam Watson, the veteran leader of the Durham miners, who most certainly did not admire what he regarded as unrealistic pie-in-the-sky Home Counties Socialist Utopianism. Short boomed out her beliefs from the rostrums of the Spa Hall in Scarborough, the Winter Gardens in Blackpool and the Ice Rink in Brighton. In full cry – no, in full spate – she won most comrades' adoration.

Renée Short was born Renée Gill in Leamington Spa in the middle of the First World War. Her mother, Miriam Marks, played very little part in her life other than to invite her for celebrations on a Friday night to celebrate her Jewish-Russian ancestry. Short was brought up by her paternal grandfather and grandmother, staunch Church of England adherents.

After Nottingham County Grammar school she went to study languages, in particular French, at Manchester University, where she met a young student, André Schwartz, a Hungarian who had escaped from Vienna at the last possible moment before the Germans arrived in the city in 1937. Changing his name to Short, he became a distinguished structural engineer working at the Building Research Centre. Their actress daughter Jenny said of her father, "He was a sort of Denis Thatcher to her." It was an outstandingly happy partnership and Andrew Short was a mine of good advice to me and others when I was Secretary of the Labour Standing Conference on the Sciences in the 1960s.

Renée Short became a shorthand journalist and made her name writing moving stories about what had become of servicemen, crippled by war; her own brother had been killed as a pilot officer. Elected in 1952 to the Hertfordshire County Council, she specialised in health matters and became chairman of Shrodell's Hospital in Watford and a governor of Watford College of Technology.

In 1955 she contested St Albans, now a Labour seat but then a Conservative blue-chip citadel. Having been deemed to have fought a good election she was chosen for neighbouring Watford, expected to be a Labour gain, but in 1959 it went down to F.W. Farey-Jones by 21,216 votes to her 18,315, with 5,753 for the Liberal. In 1964 she won Wolverhampton North-East by 18,997 to the Conservative Mrs M.M.M. Greenaway's 14,914.

On entering Parliament Short concentrated on health matters and was one of the first to champion the cause of junior hospital doctors, and the problem then, much less serious than it is now, of obesity. I remember that one of her more picturesque complaints was that women with small feet often had to buy children's shoes and women with huge feet like herself could only get men's shoes. However, her really serious medical concern was abortion. In his diaries Dick Crossman's entry for 7 July 1969 reads:

Today was very much a health day because I was first in questions. Fortunately Renée Short asked question number three on foreign women seeking abortions and I was able to report that, though I had sent letters to seven nursing homes asking for information about this, I had received only one reply. My answer was brief and quite unsensational but, as you can imagine, every paper seized on it . . . It's an ideal story, with just a little salaciousness. It's medical and mysterious and slightly dirty . . . Everything is believed and everything is printed and so my answer pretty well blanketed this evening's censure debate. After questions I was glad to give a quick press interview, conscious that there would be less space in the newspapers for the censure debate.

I was present when Renée Short held her own press conference and was hugely impressed by her knowledge of backstreet abortion and how responsible she was in not seeking personal publicity. She really cared. And this is why years later she was given the privilege of the invitation to be a lay member of the Medical Research Council. Sir James Gowans, Secretary of the Medical Research Council, told me how valuable Short's contribution had been.

Her parliamentary life was much complicated by the fact that as Member for North-East Wolverhampton she shared that city with the Member for South-West Wolverhampton – J. Enoch Powell. Normally two MPs albeit of different parties have a decent working relationship. But in the Short and Powell case this was impossible.

One of the first flash points was just before polling day in 1970 when "Nigger Neighbour" stickers started to appear round Wolverhampton, prompting Short to denounce these Fascist tactics. Powell, determined to play down the situation at that stage, said: "I have not seen nor heard of these." Short responded to the Wolverhampton Express and Star that Powell was lying. Later Short asked Elwyn Jones as Attorney General whether Powell could be prosecuted under the Race Relations Act. It was this kind of ugly situation which reduced Short's majority in Wolverhampton North-East to under 2,000 from the 8,102 which she had enjoyed in 1966.

Another major contribution Short made was to the Council of Europe, which she joined in 1964, championing the cause of appointing scientific attachés to British embassies. As one the officers of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee I saw at close quarters how good she was as Chairman, from 1982 to 1985. Not only was she a charming hostess at the committes's regular dinners but I admired the way in which she could put acute questions based on a great deal of knowledge of the scientific world.

Her other great interest was relations with Eastern Europe, East Germany and the Soviet Union in particular. No MP had a greater grasp of the technicalities of the Building Regulations, since she showed as deep an interest in her husband's work as he did in her work as a politician.

The position in which Short flowered was as Chairman of a Commons Select Committee on the Social Services between 1979 and 1987. Just before the 1979 general election she had published a seminal book, The Care of Long Term Prisoners. It would have been even more effective had there been a Labour government in 1979 but it did have an effect, I am told by senior civil servants, on Home Office thinking. As Chairman, she also put the case for nursery schools further up the political agenda.

For most of her 23 years in Parliament she served on the National Executive of the Labour Party (1970-81 and 1983-87), a "most satisfactory" member says Jack Jones, of the TGWU which sponsored her, who "impressed us as a champion of women's rights, and working people felt that she was on our side".

Having been a much-respected local MP, superb at championing personal cases, Short fell out with many members of the Wolverhampton Labour Party during the troubles of the Militant Tendency. They attempted to de-select her and so she decided to resign her seat but it was on the understanding that she would be given the peerage that she richly deserved. However, Neil Kinnock was unable to deliver it, much to her disappointment. Ironically, after the local Labour Party had winkled her out, in the 1987 general election the hitherto safe Labour seat was taken for the Conservatives by a lady dentist.

For the next decade Short undertook much valuable work in one of her other areas of interest, the theatre; particularly the Round House Theatre and the work of the Theatres' Advisory Council, of which she had been the Chairman between 1974 and 1980.

In the past five years she suffered from increasing illness and curiously reverted to speaking in French and about her schooldays. I will remember her as a parliamentary colleague who made an outstanding contribution.

Tam Dalyell