Psychiatric Bulletin (2003) 27: 277. doi: 10.1192/pb.27.7.277-b
© 2003 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Bulletin (2003) 27: 277
© 2003 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Mrs Renée Short
Formerly Labour MP for Wolverhampton NE, 1964-1987, Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Honorary Member of the Royal College of Physicians
Henry R. Rollin
The most prestigious award a royal medical college can bestow on a lay
person is to elect him or her to its Honorary Fellowship. This accolade was
awarded to Renée Short at a ceremony during the annual meeting of the
Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1988, where Professor Robert Bluglass gave
an eloquent, detailed introductory eulogy. A further distinction followed in
1989, when the Royal College of Physicians elected her to its Honorary
Membership, the two together indicating how wide-spread her services to
medical matters had been.
But the briefest biography of Renée Short would suffice to highlight
the polymathic interests of this remarkable lady, interests including,
incongruously perhaps, the breeding of standard poodles that she showed at
Crufts!
Renée Short (née Renée Gill) was born in Leamington
Spa on 26 April 1916. She was educated at Nottingham Grammar School and
Manchester University, where she studied French. At the University, she met
André Schwartz, who as a Jewish student in Vienna, had to flee the
Nazis. He changed his name to Andrew Short and went on to become a
distinguished civil engineer. They married in 1940 and had two daughters.
After university, she embarked on her spectacular and varied career. She
began as a freelance journalist, and wrote for social services journals and
for Tribune. In parallel, she worked as a theatrical costumier and
ran her own stage design business. Her interest in the theatre was lifelong,
as witness her later membership of the Round House Theatre Council and as
Chair of the Theatre's Advisory Council from 1947-1980.
Her highly-successful career in politics began as a councillor in
Hertfordshire. Then, after two unsuccessful attempts, in 1955 and 1959, to
enter Parliament, in 1964, she won the safe seat of Wolver-hampton NE, a seat
that she held with acclaim for the next 23 years.
In Parliament, she specialised in health and social services: she was the
champion of a wide variety of causes, from the rights of junior hospital
doctors through to the rights for abortion and action to combat obesity. But
of major importance was her membership as a lay member of the influential
Medical Research Council. Of particular relevance to psychiatry was her deep
concern for care in the community, with special reference to adults with
mental illnesses and those with learning disabilities, a concern that prompted
her famous aphorism: ‘any fool can close a hospital’.
But without doubt, Renée's major contribution to Parliament was
achieved as (the first) Chair of the Commons Select Committee on Social
Services, a position she held with distinction from 1979 until she retired in
1987.
Her hard left politics did not endear her to everyone, particularly because
of her refusal to acknowledge the many iniquities of the Soviet Union, a blind
spot that conceivably stemmed from her intense loathing of Fascism in all its
vile forms. No matter what, she will be remembered by posterity not only by
her politics, but as the champion of the oppressed and the
underprivileged.
Renée Short died on 18 January 2003.
