Lena Townsend

Background

She was born in Cairo as Lena Westropp, the daughter of a wealthy expatriate British family, and her early years ensured that she had a wide experience of culture.

Education

She was promising academically and attended Somerville College, Oxford and the University of Heidelberg.

Career

However, she was sent to England to Downe House, a girls" boarding school which specialised in the daughters of colonial servants. During the Second World War she was an organiser for the Women"s Voluntary Service and the Land Army. In 1955 she was first elected to the London County Council for her home seat of Hampstead, and took a special interest in the Education Committee.

She was chosen to be Leader of the Opposition on the Education Committee from the early 1960s.

Townsend was an unsuccessful candidate in the first Greater London Council election of 1964, being defeated in Camden. This brought with it membership of the LCC Education Committee"s successor body, the Inner London Education Authority, and it was there that Townsend concentrated.

Chataway did make Townsend his Deputy, and Chairman of the Schools Committee. The two worked well as a team, with both clearly on the left of the Conservative Party.

Townsend supported "Schools Councils" for pupils to take some responsibility for the management of their schools.

In 1969 Christopher Chataway was elected to Parliament in a byelection, and stepped down from the ILEA Leadership. Townsend was chosen as his successor, and largely continued his moderate policies. She was however faced with a strike of teachers in November that year over a national pay claim.

Fighting for re-election in 1970, Townsend promoted the record of three years of Conservative ILEA by pointing to the success in reducing class sizes by employing more teachers.

However, there was a small swing to Labour, who regained control. Townsend lost her seat in Camden but was elected as an Alderman to the Greater London Council and co-opted to ILEA"s Education Committee.

She remained as Leader of the Opposition until February 1971 when she resigned, saying that she needed a paying job. Townsend remained an Alderman of the Greater London Council until 1977 when the Aldermanic system was abolished.

In Edward Heath"s Dissolution Honours list of 1974 she was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Keeping the links with the country of her birth, she was President of the Anglo-Egyptian Association from 1961 until it was wound up in 1987.

Achievements

• However, in 1967 she was more fortunate and won by about 4,000 votes. The Conservatives had won narrow control of ILEA and Townsend ran for the Leadership, but lost to Christopher Chataway who was the preferred candidate of the Conservative Party nationally. She was a founder member of the Conservative Group for Europe.

Views

When Christian morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse attacked a British Broadcasting Corporation sex education film, Townsend defended lieutenant

Membership

She was nominated as a member of the Race Relations Board Conciliation Committee for London in 1968. She was a member of several bodies, most prominently as a Governor of the London College of Fashion (and Chair of Governors from 1967 to 1986).