Florence Paton
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Florence Paton | |
|---|---|
| Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe | |
| In office 5 July 1945 – 3 February 1950 | |
| Prime Minister | Clement Attlee |
| Preceded by | Ralph Assheton |
| Succeeded by | Martin Redmayne |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Florence Beatrice Widdowson 1 June 1891 John Paton |
Florence Beatrice Paton (née Widdowson; 1 June 1891 – 12 October 1976) was a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom, and a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1950.
Early life
She was born in
Methodist lay preacher, she was initially a Liberal, but joined the Independent Labour Party
(ILP) in 1917.
Electoral history
Under her maiden name of Florence Widdowson, she first stood for
John Paton, she stood again in Rushcliffe in 1931. When the ILP split from Labour in 1932, John and Florence Paton stayed with the ILP. They left the following year, and rejoined the Labour Party, but by then the Rushcliffe Constituency Labour Party had selected H. J. Cadogan as its prospective parliamentary candidate. She was reselected as candidate only after Cadogan had been defeated in the 1934 by-election and at the 1935 general election
.
She won the Rushcliffe seat at the
, Pickthorn increased his majority on each occasion.In Parliament
At the start of the 1946-47 session of Parliament, she was nominated by the
House of Commons
. She did not, however, sit in the Speaker's Chair.
When the House is in committee, the chairman sits at the table, rather than in the Speaker's Chair; the first woman to occupy the Speaker's Chair was the
Betty Harvie Anderson (Conservative), on 2 July 1970, who took the Chair during the debate on the Queen's Speech.[1]
In 1947, she was a British delegate to the United Nations.
After Parliament
From 1955 to 1958, Paton was a member of the
Royal Commission on common land
.
She died in Wolverhampton on 12 October 1976. Her husband
John
, who had held his parliamentary seat until 1964, died two months later.
References
- ^ Women in the House of Commons Archived 18 May 2005 at the Wayback Machine, House of Commons Information Office, Members series Factsheet M04
Further reading
- Centre for Advancement of Women in Politics: Florence Paton
- Dictionary of National Biography: Florence Beatrice Paton (1891–1976)
- ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
- Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "R" (part 2)
External links
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Florence Paton
- Florence Beatrice Paton portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London