Early Life
Margaret Beckett was born Margaret Jackson in 1943, in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire into a working-class family. She had two sisters, one a nun, the other a doctor and mother of 3. She was educated at the Notre Dame High School for Girls in Norwich (a Roman Catholic direct grant grammar school which subsequently became a voluntary aided Catholic comprehensive in 1979), then at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where she qualified as a metallurgist. She was an active member of the Student Union and served on its Council as Associate Member rep.
In 1961, Beckett joined Associated Electrical Industries as a student apprentice in metallurgy. She joined the Transport and General Workers Union in 1964 and remains a member to this day. She joined the University of Manchester in 1966 as an experiment officer in its metallurgy department. In 1970 Beckett went to work for the Labour Party as a researcher in industrial policy.
She married the chairman of her local Constituency Labour Party, Lionel "Leo" Beckett in 1979. Leo works as Beckett's agent and aide, travelling with her and working in her private office. He is paid from Margaret Beckett's staff allowance, one of the largest staff expenses. Leo has two sons from a previous marriage, and three grandchildren.
Beckett and her husband enjoy caravan holidays and have continued to do so throughout her political career.
Read more about this topic: Margaret Beckett
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“You must, to get through life well, practice industry with economy, never create a debt for anything that is not absolutely necessary, and if you make a promise to pay money at a day certain, be sure to comply with it. If you do not, you lay yourself liable to have your feelings injured and your reputation destroyed with the just imputation of violating your word.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)