Dame Dehra S. Parker, GBE, Personal Computer was the longest serving woman Member of Parliament in the Northern Ireland House of Commons.
Background
Dehra Kerr-Fisher was born in a military hospital in Dehra Dun, north of Delhi, India, in 1882, the only child of James and Annie Kerr-Fisher. Her father, a native of Kilrea, County Londonderry, was a successful financier. She was educated in the United States, where her father held extensive property holdings, and in Germany.
Career
Her grandson, James Chichester-Clark, was elected unopposed at the subsequent by-election. He later served as the fifth Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1971. From her re-election in 1933 until her retirement in 1960, she faced opposition only once.
During the 1949 Northern Ireland General Election, with anti-partition agitation a common theme across the region, she was opposed in South Londonderry by a Nationalist Party candidate, T.B. Agnew, whom she defeated.
She was a Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education from 1 December 1937 to 15 March 1944. She was also Chair of the Northern Ireland General Health Services Board from 1948 to 1949.
Her promotion to the Cabinet under Viscount Brookeborough was part of his reforming premiership. His predecessor having been criticised for appointing very elderly members to Cabinet.
She was the first woman to serve in the Northern Ireland Cabinet.
Outside of parliamentary activities Dame Dehra was a long-serving local councillor on Magherafelt rural district council, president of both the Northern Ireland Physical Training Association and the Girls" Training Corps, and chairman of the Ancient Monuments Advisory Committee. In 1944 Parker was appointed senior vice-chairman of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA Northen Ireland), and in 1949 she succeeded Sir David Lindsay Keir as President for CEMA, a position she held until 1960. She died at her home, Shanemullagh House, Castledawson, County Londonderry, on 28 November 1963, at age 81.
She was interred two days later in the grounds of Christ Church, Castledawson.
Membership
She served as Minister of Health and Local Government from 26 August 1949 to 13 March 1957 and became a member of the Privy Council of Northern Ireland in 1949.