Obituary: Betty Boothroyd – BBC News

He harboured parliamentary ambitions which were never realised but eventually he was made a life peer and delighted in entertaining leading society figures, as well as the movers and shakers in the Labour Party.

It was a world away from the streets of Dewsbury but Boothroyd, by all accounts, settled in well and became part of the family.

Walston’s son Oliver later said that his father’s relationship with Betty Boothroyd was very close but, in no sense could it have been called intimate. Indeed, she sued newspapers who suggested otherwise.

In fact, Boothroyd remained single throughout her life, admitting to having had boyfriends, and three proposals, but declaring that she was too busy to enter into any long-term commitment.

In May 1973, and at the fifth attempt, she finally entered Parliament after winning a by-election in the safe Labour seat of West Bromwich.

“I had become the girl least likely to succeed,” she later recalled. “If I had lost West Bromwich, I would have slit my throat.”

She was appointed an assistant whip in the incoming Labour government of 1974 and also served on the party’s National Executive.

She became a deputy Speaker in 1987, the second woman to hold that position after the Conservative MP Betty Harvie Anderson who had been deputy in the early 70s.