Member of Parliament
In 1973, she was selected as Labour candidate for Lincoln, which the party wanted to win back from dissident ex-Labour MP Dick Taverne. Beckett lost to Taverne at the February 1974 general election by 1,297 votes. After the election she went to work as a researcher for Judith Hart, the Minister for Overseas Development at the Foreign Office. Harold Wilson called another general election in October 1974, and Beckett again went to fight Taverne at Lincoln in the October 1974 general election. This time Beckett was elected, by just 984 votes.
Almost immediately after her election she was appointed as Judith Hart's Parliamentary Private Secretary. Harold Wilson made her a Whip in 1975, and she was promoted in 1976 by James Callaghan to Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Education and Science, replacing Joan Lestor, who had resigned in protest over spending cuts. She remained in that position until she lost her seat at the 1979 general election. The Conservative candidate Kenneth Carlisle narrowly won the seat with a 602 vote majority, the first time the Conservatives had won at Lincoln since 1935.
She joined Granada Television as a researcher in 1979. Out of Parliament, and now Margaret Beckett, she was elected to Labour's National Executive Committee in 1980, and supported left-winger Tony Benn in the 1981 Labour deputy leadership election won by Denis Healey. She was the subject of a vociferous attack from Joan Lestor at the conference.
Beckett was chosen to fight the parliamentary seat of Derby South after the retirement of the sitting MP, Walter Johnson. At the 1983 general election she won the seat only very narrowly; the Labour majority was 421.
Read more about this topic: Margaret Beckett
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