Alma Birk
Alma Birk, Baroness Birk ( born September 22, 1917 in Brighton, East Sussex, England; † 29 December 1996, Westminster, London) was a British journalist and politician of the Labour Party. Since 1967 she worked as a Life Peeress member of the House of Lords.
Life
Birk was as Alma Lillian Wilson, the daughter of Barnett Wilson (formerly Woolfson ) and his wife Alice Wilson, born Tosh, born. Her parents lived in the Stamford Hill area of London. She grew up in middle-class family. Your parents ran a successful company that produced greeting cards and greeting cards and sales. She attended South Hampstead High School in the London borough of Hampstead. She studied at the London School of Economics (LSE ). After graduating from the LSE, she began working as a journalist. You first wrote columns for the published by the Labour Party weekly newspaper Forward. Then it was columnist for the Daily Herald.
Birk, coined since her time at the LSE greatly from socialism, was active as a politician first in local politics. Since the late 1930s, she was active for the Labour Party in London's Finchley. During the Second World War, she ran unsuccessfully as a councilor for a seat on the Salisbury City Council. From 1950 to 1953 she was councilor in Finchley Borough Council, where he was chairman of the Labour Group. For the Labour Party ran three times unsuccessfully for a seat in the House of Commons: at the British general election, 1950 for the constituency of Ruislip - Northwood, as well as in the British general election, 1951, where she, only just, and the British general election, 1955 for the constituency of Portsmouth West.
From 1965 to 1969 she was co- editor of the British women's magazine Nova.
From 1969 to 1972 she was president ( chairman ) of the Health Education Council. She was Vice - President ( Vice -president ) of the Council of Children's Welfare ( 1968-1975 ), Chairman ( Chairman ) and Vice - President of the Redbridge Jewish Youth Centre ( 1970-1996 ) and board member of the Council of Christians and Jews (1971 - 1977). She was also a member of the Holocaust Memorial Committee, a member of the Theatres ' Trust, Director of the British Film Institute, President of the Association of Art Institutions (1984-1996) and President of Craft Arts Design Association ( 1984-1990 ).
Birk was a Fellow of the Royal Society ( F.R.S. ); at times they exercised the office of a peace judge.
She was follower and supporter of the Fabian Society; the intellectual orientation of the Fabian Society was for Birk lifelong impact on their thinking and actions.
Membership in the House of Lords
On September 13, 1967 Birk was appointed Life peer and became a member of the House of Lords; they bore the title Baroness Birk, of Regent 's Park in Greater London. Your inauguration, she held on 29 November 1967. In her inaugural speech, she called for a strengthening of probation and the juvenile court in order to combat juvenile delinquency better. The prison was one of their preferred political interests. Birk was from 1967 to 1971 a member of the visiting service of Holloway Prison and a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform.
In the House of Lords, she took over from March to October 1974 in their capacity as parliamentary secretary of the Labour Group (Government Whip ) volunteering a " Baroness -in- Waiting". From 1974 to 1979 she was Parliamentary Under - Secretary of State ( Parliamentary Under- Secretary of State ) in the British Ministry of Environment ( Department of the Environment ). In 1979 she was briefly Minister of State (Minister of State ) in the Privy Council Office.
Birk was involved in the House of Lords continue intensively after the Labour Party was in opposition from 1979. She was initially opposition spokeswoman for the subject area of environment and environmental policy (1979-1986; opposition frontbench Spokesman on the environment), and then for the subjects of art, library and librarianship, preservation and Broadcasting (1986-1993; opposition frontbench Spokesman arts libraries, heritage and broadcasting). In particular, the last-mentioned topics included Birks special attention; she described this as their " happiest time " in the House of Lords.
On March 19, 1996, she enlisted in the Broadcasting Bill for the last time to speak. Although seriously ill, she took to the last regularly attend meetings of the House of Lords.
Private
On 24 December 1939 she married in Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue her husband Samuel Ellis Birk. Ellis Birk worked at the time of marriage as a clerk in a solicitor. He later became a lawyer and newspaper publisher. From the marriage were two children, a son and a daughter.
Birk died on 29 December 1996 at her home, 34 Bryanston Square, Westminster to the consequences of its long-term breast cancer.