The first and to date only woman to have led Britain’s largest local authority, Theresa Stewart, has passed away aged 90. A giant in Birmingham politics, Stewart led the council from 1993-1999, representing Labour in her Billesley seat for 31 years and serving as Lord Mayor. Born Theresa Raisman in Leeds in 1930 into a large and close knit Jewish family, Stewart won a scholarship to study maths at Oxford University, working at Marconi and then teaching near Edinburgh before having the first of four children.
Theresa, her husband and her children moved to Birmingham in 1966 after living in London and Doncaster. A lifelong activist, Stewart threw herself into the causes she believed in, including CND, civil rights, the miners’ strike, and always the Labour Party; but it is her passions for social services, education and women for which she will be most remembered.
First elected in 1970, as a new councillor Stewart fought hard to defend the Family Allowance as an income for mothers, and went on to help found and then support the Birmingham Pregnancy Advice Service. A staunchly principled politician, Stewart briefly and infamously lost the Labour Whip, but won respect, for voting against cuts to a local children’s home with around 20 Labour colleagues.
She served as chair of Birmingham’s social services committee prior to being elected leader of the council where she made social services, schools and early years her priority, redirecting investment and supporting heavyweights such as Adrianne Jones as director of social services and Tim Brighouse as director of education. An Ofsted chief would later cite Birmingham’s schools during the 1990s as being the best in the country.
In 1998 as council leader Stewart welcomed Tony Blair, Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton to the city for the G8 summit; however it was the photograph which showed her meeting Nelson Mandela which sat on her mantlepiece along with those of her large family. This caught the eye of nearly every visitor to her home. She would go on to serve as Lord Mayor, using her civic office to further promote the causes she believed in. Throughout her life she continued to serve on school governing bodies and health boards across the city. Stewart was recognised as being an early friend to Birmingham’s gay community, helping them secure grants in the 1970s at a time when few other councillors would be associated.
Stewart described her role as a labour councillor as ‘doing for poor people what lawyers do for rich people’. She was a firm believer in the power of local government to change lives, a passion shared with her husband John Stewart, a professor in local government studies. An activist to the last, she was delivering leaflets for the 2017 general election aged 87, and would continue to chair her Labour Party branch for another year after. Stewart is survived by her husband of 67 years, her four children, and 10 grandchildren and seven great grandchildren; and her legacy lives on in the women councillors she encouraged and inspired, and the tens of thousands of Birmingham people whose education and childhoods were touched by her work.
Brigid Jones is deputy leader of Birmingham City Council
