Margaret Betty Harvie Anderson, Baroness Skrimshire of Quarter, OBE, PC, TD, DL (12 August 1913 – 7 November 1979) was a British Conservative Party politician.
Harvie Anderson was educated at St Leonards School, St Andrews and became a lieutenant-colonel in the ATS after enlisting in 1939. In 1945 she was elected a councillor on Stirling County Council, serving until 1959 and chairing the Moderate Group from 1953. She was active and prominent in public life in Scotland.
Harvie Anderson stood for parliament for West Stirlingshire in 1950 and 1951 and in Sowerby in 1955. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Renfrewshire East from 1959 to 1979. Although Betty Boothroyd was the first woman Speaker of the House of Commons, Harvie Anderson was the first woman to sit in the Speaker's Chair as a Deputy Speaker (Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means) from 1970 to 1973.
After her retirement as an MP in 1979, Harvie Anderson was given a life peerage. She took the unusual title of Baroness Skrimshire of Quarter, of Dunipace in the District of Falkirk, made up of her husband's name (Dr John Francis Penrose Skrimshire) and the estate she owned in Scotland. However, she died suddenly only a month later.
Famous quotes containing the words betty and/or anderson:
“He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co- ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, “Give me the co-ordinates.”... The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea.... Hot dog!”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“I have always suspected that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is a boon to people who don’t have deep feelings; their pleasure comes from what they know about things, and their pride from showing off what they know. But this only emphasizes the difference between the artist and the scholar.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)