Jill Knight

Early life

She was born in Bristol in 1923 (although she later shaved several years off). Her parents divorced when she was a girl. Her mother was a teacher and a graduate of Bristol University. Christie attended Fairfield Secondary and Higher Grade School in Bristol and the King Edward Grammar School for Girls, Birmingham. In 1941, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). Her unit served in Amiens, moving later to Hamburg, following the British advance, performing ground control of aircraft. She also appeared on British Forces Network radio.

Upon her return to the UK she joined the Young Conservatives in London. On 14 June 1947 she married James Montague "Monty" Knight (an optician, who had served in the war as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy), and moved to Northampton.

Political career

She was elected as a councillor on Northampton Borough Council, and served from 1956–66, and became a whip. She unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary seat of Northampton in 1959 and 1964 for the Conservative Party. She was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Edgbaston in the 1966 general election, and held that seat in successive elections until she stood down at the 1997 election. The Conservative MP for Edgbaston, Dame Edith Pitt, had died on 27 January 1966 and it was the first time that a female Member of Parliament had been succeeded by another woman.

Knight was a member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration, 1969–72. For more than two decades she was an active member of the Conservative Monday Club and was an outspoken opponent of the Irish Republican Army. Following the February 1972 Aldershot Bombing by the IRA she called for legislation to outlaw the IRA, and attacked supporters and sympathisers on the mainland.

She was on the Select Committee for the Council of Europe from 1977, Home Affairs 1980–83, Lady Chairman of the Lords and Commons All-Party Child and Family Protection Group from 1978, on the Conservative Back-bench Health and Social Services Committee from 1982, Secretary to the 1922 Committee 1983–87. She was President of the West Midlands Conservative Political Centre 1980–83 and Lady Chairman of the Western European Union Relations with Parliaments Committee, 1984–1988. She served on the Council of Europe (1977–88), and as Chairman, British Inter-Parliamentary Union (1994–97). Knight, along with David Wilshire, introduced the Section 28 amendment to the Local Government Act 1988, which barred local authorities from promoting homosexuality.

In June 2013, she opposed same-sex marriage, arguing that Parliament cannot change the fact that "marriage is not about just love. It is about a man and a woman, themselves created to produce children, producing children. A man can no more bear a child, than a woman can produce sperm, and no law on earth can change that. This is not a homophobic view. It may be sad, it may be unequal, but it's true."

Knight was created a Life Peer as Baroness Knight of Collingtree, of Collingtree in the County of Northamptonshire in 1997 after standing down at that year's general election, and retired from the House of Lords on 24 March 2016. She was appointed MBE in 1964, and elevated to DBE in 1985. She was interviewed in 2012 as part of The History of Parliament's oral history project.