マーガレット・ベケット
出典: フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
マーガレット・ベケット (Margaret Mary Beckett, 旧姓Margaret Mary Jackson, 1943年1月5日 - ) はイギリスの政治家。労働党所属のダービー南選挙区選出下院議員。2001年から2006年5月まで環境・食料・地方問題担当国務大臣を務めた。同月に行われた地方選挙における与党労働党の敗北を受けて行われたブレア内閣改造において外務大臣に任命された。英国の内閣の歴史において、女性が外務大臣に任命されたのは彼女が初めてであり、 Great Offices of Stateに属する4省庁の長としては二人目である。
[編集] 出身
マーガレット・ジャクソンは1943年にイングランドのアシュトン・アンダー・ラインにおいて、大工の父の娘として生まれた。母はアイルランド出身のローマ・カトリック教徒であった。姉妹は後に修道女となっている。マーガレットはノートル・ダム高校 (ノーウィッチ)において教育を受け、マンチェスター科学技術大学において金属工学を専攻した。後にマンチェスター・メトロポリタン大学にも在籍している。
1961年にジャクソンはアソシエイテッド・エレクトリカル・インダストリーズに学生見習いとして入社した。1964年には運輸および一般労働者同盟に加盟し、それから40年に渡り構成員として登録している。1966年には会社を退社し、マンチェスター大学の実験助手として就職した。1970年に労働党の工業問題担当職員として働き始めた。
1973年に彼女はリンカーン選挙区の労働党候補に選出された。元労働党候補を相手にした1974年の総選挙においては1200差で敗北している。選挙後はジュディス・ハートの助手として勤務したが、ハロルド・ウィルソンが再度の選挙を設定したため、行われた同年10月の総選挙においては420票差で勝利を収めた。
Almost immediately after her election she was given a job as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to her old boss, Judith Hart who was now the Minister for Overseas Development. Harold Wilson gave her a job as a Whip in 1975, and she was promoted in 1976 by James Callaghan as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Education and Science, replacing Joan Lestor who had resigned in protest over spending cuts. She remained in that position until she lost her seat at the 1979 general election. The Conservative candidate Kenneth Carlisle gained the seat by 602 votes, the first time the party had won the seat since 1935.
She married Lionel Beckett, a local party official at Lincoln, shortly after her defeat, but they have no children. She joined Granada Television in 1979 as a researcher. Out of Parliament, and now Margaret Beckett, she won election to Labour's National Executive Committee in 1980, and outspokenly supported left-winger Tony Benn for the Labour deputy leadership in 1981 against Denis Healey. She was the subject of a vociferous attack from Joan Lestor at the conference.
Beckett was chosen to fight the parliamentary seat of Derby South after the retirement of the right winger Walter Johnson. At the 1983 General Election she came very close to losing the seat but came out victorious by just 421 votes.
Returning to the House of Commons, Margaret Beckett gradually moved away from the hard left, supporting incumbent leader Neil Kinnock against Benn in 1988. By this time she was a front bencher, as a spokesperson on Social Security since 1984, becoming a member of the Shadow Cabinet in 1989 as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. After the 1992 General Election she was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and served under John Smith as Shadow Leader of the House of Commons. She became a Member of the Privy Council in 1993.
She was acting party leader after the death of John Smith in 1994, and therefore also the acting Leader of the Opposition, but placed third behind Tony Blair and John Prescott in the subsequent leadership election. In order to stand for the leadership she had to resign the deputy leadership so that the two posts came up for election at the same time; in this contest she lost to Prescott.
Under Tony Blair's leadership, Margaret Beckett was the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and then from 1995 the Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Following the 1997 General Election, she entered Tony Blair's government as the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. She became Leader of the House of Commons in 1998.
After the 2001 General Election she was given the role as the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs where she remained until May 2006, when she was made Foreign Secretary after the 2006 local elections. She has managed to remain part of Blair's inner circle despite close links with the trade union movement. In August 2002 she expressed reservations about the prospect of a war in Iraq, but supported the 2003 Iraq war when the time came.
She is one of the five original members of the cabinet left and one of the longest serving Labour frontbench spokesperson. She has received some praise for being a 'safe pair of hands' [1]; however, she saw some criticism in April 2006 when the details of Ministers' use of RAF aircraft for official travel were published. Beckett was discovered to have taken 134 flights on ministerial business between 2002 and March 2005, flying 102,673 miles; this was calculated as producing 191.08 tons of Carbon dioxide.
On 10th January 2006 in an interview on the Today Programme, Beckett said that she wanted the forthcoming Animal Welfare Bill to prevent the use of wild animals in circuses.
