Shirley Porter

 ( 1930 Births ) 

Between 1939 and 1945 Porter Boarding school at Warren School For Girls in Worthing, Sussex. She then spent a year at La Ramée, a finishing school in Lausanne, Switzerland, followed by a year at St. Godric's Secretarial and Language School in Hampstead, London.

As a young married woman, Porter became involved with Jewish charities and played golf. In 1960, she was involved in the exposure of ten golf clubs in north London for discriminating against Jews.

Porter became a magistrate before entering local politics. Looking back at that time, she said "I remember my great lack of confidence, that I came in there and for the first time and I wasn't somebody's daughter, somebody's wife, somebody's mother. That's a very very mind-boggling feeling." In 1974, she was elected to Westminster City Council as a Conservative councillor for Hyde Park Ward and soon became involved in anti-litter campaigns.

In 1983, she was elected leader of Westminster City Council. Her initiatives and policies included, as well as the anti-litter campaign, the say no to drugs campaign and the plain English campaign; she was also involved in the abolition of the Greater London Council. After delivering victory in Westminster for the Conservatives in the 1990 local elections, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1991 New Year Honours by prime minister John Major for "political and public service". In February 1991 she stood down as leader of the council and later that year became Lord Mayor of Westminster.

She soon joined the "Clean Up London" campaign. She encouraged hoteliers to join forces to attack the squalor that was affecting their businesses. Her enthusiasm also aided her election as vice-chairman of Highways and Works Committee on 28 June 1977. Her anti-litter activities within the CUL campaign continued. The Paddington Mercury described Porter as "fast winning a reputation as Paddington's Mrs Mops". She also mobilised schoolchildren in her campaign, raising brooms over their shoulders like rifles at the Lord Mayor's Show and singing "Pick up your litter and put it in the bin". By 1978, Porter had been elected as chairman of the Highways and Works Committee, in the same year she launched the "Mr Clean Up" anti-litter campaign.

In January 1979, strikes began as part of the "Winter of Discontent". Rubbish collectors in Westminster went on strike and there was mounting waste in the streets. Porter opened 33 emergency rubbish dumps across the borough. Porter told press reporters that they would privatise rubbish collection if the strikers did not return to work. This practice was installed later on. Porter's successive litter campaigns included the "Cleaner London Campaign", followed by the "Cleaner City Initiative" in 1980. Activities included the deployment of additional street sweepers in particularly squalor-ridden areas of Westminster for a 2–3 week period. Porter also increased the regularity of rubbish collections and convinced local businesses to sponsor litter bins.

She threatened to resign in September 1980 when her department of Highways and Works faced a £1 million budget cut; "I will resign in the event that they cut our basic services and that means keeping our frontline services and a clean and litter-free city." In 1981, Porter launched "Operation Spring Clean", a cleaning blitz of the West End. In a 1991 appearance on Desert Island Discs, Porter said: "I really just feel so strongly that it isn't right for people to live in a dirty environment, and in an unpleasant environment. And it isn't just litter: I’m talking about the whole quality of life. When you live in pleasant surroundings, I think you are a better person."

Another vital part of Building Stable Communities policy was the removal of homeless voters and others who lived in hostels and were perceived less likely to vote Conservative, such as students and nurses, from the City of Westminster. As the City Council found it more and more difficult to move homeless people outside Westminster, the Building Stable Communities programme switched to moving homeless people to safe wards in the city, where their votes would have less impact. In 1989 over 100 homeless families were removed from hostels in marginal wards and placed in the Hermes and Chantry Point tower blocks in the safe Labour ward of Harrow Road. These blocks contained a dangerous form of asbestos, and should have either been cleaned up or demolished a decade before but had remained in place due to funding disputes between the City Council and the by now abolished Greater London Council. Many of the flats had had their heating and sanitation systems destroyed by the council to prevent their use as drug dens, others had indeed been taken over by heroin users and still others had pigeons making nests out of asbestos, with the level in flats in Hermes and Chantry Points well above safe norms. One former homeless refuge was sold off at a discounted price to private developers and converted into private flats for young professional people at a cost to the ratepayer of £2.6 million.

Labour councillors and members of the public referred the key wards policy to the district auditor to check on its legality. In 1990, the Conservatives were re-elected in Westminster in a landslide election victory in which they won all but one of the wards targeted by Building Stable Communities. Porter stood down as Leader of the council in 1991, and served in the ceremonial position of Lord Mayor of Westminster in 1991–1992. She resigned from the council in 1993, and retired to live in Israel with her husband.

The Court of Appeal overturned the judgement by a majority decision in 1999, but the House of Lords unanimously reinstated it in 2001, with a surcharge of £27m levied on Porter. Including interest, the surcharge now stood at £43.3 million. In Israel, Porter transferred substantial parts of her great wealth to other members of her family and into secret trusts to avoid the charge and subsequently claimed assets of only £300,000. After the judgement in the House of Lords, Porter submitted an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. The appeal was ruled inadmissible in April 2003.

In November 2009, ahead of a BBC radio play, Shirleymander, dramatising the principal events of Shirley Porter's time as leader at Westminster City Council, council leader Colin Barrow apologised unreservedly to all those affected by the "gerrymandering" policy. He criticised Shirley Porter by name for the first time and added that her actions were "the opposite of the council's policies today". Following reports in 2006 that Porter had bought a £1.5m flat in Mayfair, the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, asked Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, to commence an investigation into whether or not Porter committed perjury or other offences during the conduct of the homes for votes case.