Betty Lockwood, Baroness Lockwood

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 1975–83 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 (1982–83). On 27 February 1978 she was elevated to a life peerage as Baroness Lockwood, of Dewsbury in the County of West Yorkshire. She sat in the House of Lords until her retirement on 18 May 2017.

Affiliations

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.

Family

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