Lady Gardner of Parkes, Conservative peer who championed women’s rights in the EU and UN – obituary
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Lady Gardner of Parkes, who has died aged 96, was an Australian-born dentist who was created a Conservative life peer in 1981 by Margaret Thatcher; Trixie Gardner possessed the uncrushable spirit typical of her native land and was both politically uninhibited and seemingly unaware of British class barriers and class distinctions.
These qualities enabled her, as a member of the Greater London Council and later in the House of Lords, to play an important cohesive role in the women’s movement. She served as British chairman of the European Union of Women from 1978 to 1982, then as the UK representative at the United Nations Status of Women Commission until 1988.
In the latter role she worked happily with representatives of women’s organisations, ranging from the radical Left to the political Right, to formulate a considered British position at UN conferences.
She was born Rachel Trixie Anne McGirr at Parkes, New South Wales, on July 17 1927, one of nine children. Her grandfather had emigrated to Australia from Ireland in 1868 to prospect for gold. He discovered none but became successful as a dairy farmer and property developer.
Trixie’s father, Gregory McGirr, was a pharmacist who specialised in vermin poisons and became minister for public health and motherhood in a New South Wales Labor government of the 1920s. Her uncle James McGirr, premier of New South Wales from 1947 to 1952, was the first head of government in the developed world to introduce, in 1947, the 40-hour week.
From Monte Sant’ Angelo College, North Sydney, Trixie McGirr went up to Sydney University to study dentistry. Halfway through the course her father became very ill, so she returned home to help her mother look after him.
By the time her father died it was too late for her to go back to university, so she took a course in cookery at East Sydney Technical College, becoming one of the first women to complete the full three-year course and get the certificate. Afterwards she returned to Sydney university to complete the dentistry course.
On holiday in England she met her future husband, Kevin Gardner, also an Australian dentist. When they became engaged, she suggested that she should not complete a cordon bleu course on which she had enrolled in Paris. “If you are marrying me you will,” he told her. So she did, and they were married in Paris in 1956.
There was a shortage of jobs for dentists in Australia so the Gardners decided to save up and buy a practice in London.
Though she wrote to all the political parties on her arrival in England, she did not join a party until she was invited to do so by a canvasser for the Conservative Party. The Conservatives invited her to give a talk about Australia to a local women’s group; she repeated the talk the following year and was invited to become chairman of the group.
Her involvement grew, and she was elected to Westminster council in 1968, serving as GLC member for Havering from 1970 to 1973 then for Enfield from 1977 to 1986.
She joined the GLC women’s committee, which had previously been cold-shouldered by the council’s Conservative members. She also served on hospital boards, and in 1963 tried unsuccessfully to become the first woman to sit on the NHS board for dentistry. She was a member of the Inner London Executive Council of the NHS from 1966 to 1977, and of the Standing Dental Advisory Committee for England and Wales from 1968 to 1976.
Trixie Gardner fought two general elections: in 1970 she reduced Barbara Castle’s majority in Blackburn by 5,000 and in February 1974 stood, again unsuccessfully, against the Liberal John Pardoe in North Cornwall.
After taking her seat as Lady Gardner of Parkes in 1981, she succeeded Lady Trumpington as UK representative at the United Nations Status of Women Commission. She was a member of the Department of Employment’s advisory committee on women’s employment from 1980 to 1988.
In the House of Lords, Lady Gardner often spoke in debates about the health service, women and London. In 1984 she proposed the introduction of on-the-spot fines for fare evasion on London Transport. In 1988 she led a revolt against the Government’s proposal to impose charges for dental tests, arguing that such charges would adversely affect opportunities for preventive care.
She was appointed a deputy speaker in the House of Lords and deputy chairman of committees in 1999. During the 1990s she served as chairman of the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead and as vice-chairman of the North East Thames Regional Health Authority. She was honorary president of the War Widows’ Association of Great Britain from 1984 to 1987.
Lady Gardner’s husband predeceased her in 2007; she is survived by their three daughters.
Lady Gardner of Parkes, born July 17 1927, died April 14 2024
