Vale Baroness Trixie, ‘that Australian Peer’

As she entered the hotel restaurant in Knightsbridge 18 years ago in a smart navy pant suit, silk scarf and sensible shoes, she could have been any wealthy, elderly, upper-middle-class Englishwoman. But as she introduced herself, it was clear from the firmness of the hand and the timbre of the voice that she was Australian. ‘’Call me Trixie’’, she said warmly and without ceremony.

‘’Trixie’’, who died on 14 April, was the first and (so far) the only Australian woman to be ennobled; and for 42 years she sat in the House of Lords as Baroness Gardner of Parkes – a fragrant yet singular title that paid homage to her husband of half a century, Kevin Gardner, and her birthplace in central New South Wales 96 years ago. Before her death, she was the longest-serving Life Peer and the longest-lived sitting member of both Houses of Parliament  (since Lord Christopher — 99 on Anzac Day and the last British Parliamentarian to serve in the Second World War – took leave of absence).

She held her title with dedication and brio, ever since Tory grandee Lord Thorneycroft, recommended her to Margaret Thatcher for a peerage. The Conservative Party needed good women in the Lords, ‘doers’. ’Give me the good women and I’ll appoint them,’’ the PM had said. They certainly found one in Trixie. Her motto was — every peer has to have one -– Keep Going. It’s in the genes. Trixie was from a dynasty of doers, the McGirrs.

Her great-great uncle was parish priest of Parkes in central western New South Wales (named in honour of Henry, ‘the Father of Federation’) and in 1868 his nephew, John Patrick McGirr, migrated from Ireland to join him and to make his fortune. He acquired dairies and some town properties. Three of his sons were to sit in New South Wales parliament, all members of the Labor Party. Greg (left) was his second son and qualified as a pharmacist.   He had made his own fortune selling his patent for rabbit poison. After the company handed over the cheque they asked him for his formula. As Trixie recounts it, ‘’ He got out a tin of jam, poured a bit of strychnine in it, stirred it about and said, ‘There you are’.’’

Greg entered State Parliament in 1913 and wed Rachel Miller-Hermes the following year. In 1920 he became Minister for Public Health and Motherhood. As the father of nine, he would grow into the role. Of course, thereafter he became known as ’Mother McGirr’. The Australian Dictionary of Biography describes him as having ‘’an ebullient, populist style, tending to be overbearing and insensitive, with a sledge-hammer eloquence … but he was good company and generous, of medium build, good-looking with reddish hair.’’

Trixie remembers his abiding words of advice for political meetings, ‘’Always have a horse and trap handy’’. He was also responsible for her motto. He knew a commercial traveler who set out from Sydney across the Blue Mountains and everywhere he stopped he was told, ‘Too late. I placed my order yesterday.’ After a few days he sent a telegram to head office, ‘No point continuing. 50 ahead of me’ The reply came, ‘Go ahead. 50 more coming behind.’

Greg McGirr drew from that his philosophy – it did not matter who was ahead of you, to get anywhere you had to keep going.’ He was briefly leader of the Party in 1925 but a crisis followed and Jack Lang was elected Premier. He resigned and turned to business, making his fortune from that 100 quid.

Rachel Trixie Anne McGirr was born two years later, the eighth of the nine children. She missed all the hurly burly of politics, although her uncle Jim McGirr (right) went on to become Premier of New South Wales from 1947 to 1952.  By then Trixie had left Monte Saint Angelo Convent in North Sydney and enrolled in dentistry at Sydney University.   Her mother had graduated in Arts in 1912, one of the early women graduates of the university, and even in Trixie’s time, there were few female dentists.  But before she finished her father fell ill and she returned home to be with her mother.

When Greg McGirr died, in March 1949, it was too late for her to return to university so she enrolled in a cookery course at East Sydney Tech. Three years later she returned to complete dentistry. While on holiday in the UK she met a colleague, a fellow Australian, from the dental school, Kevin Gardner. They fell in love and she decided not to enroll in the Cordon Bleu de Paris course. ‘’If you are marrying me, you will, ‘’ said Kevin. She did and they wed in Paris and decided to remain and practice in London.

In the early Sixties the local MP knocked on their door and Trixie asked if there was anything she could do. She decided she would employ her cordon bleu and cook for old people. She soon learnt that frozen pre-cooked fare was prepared for the oldies and all one did was pop it in hot water so she spent her time washing up. She retired from the sink to have her third and last daughter (Joanna joined Sarah and Rachel) but later took to speaking about Australia to the local Conservative women’s group.

She proved so popular she became branch Chairman and in 1968 she was elected to the Westminster City Council, where she remained for a decade.  In 1970 she became a member of the Greater London Council — on and off — until it was abolished by Margaret Thatcher in 1986, exasperated after half a decade of provocative revolutionary rule by Red Ken Livingstone.

Trixie had already seen red when she (unsuccessfully) contested the House of Commons seat of Blackburn held by Barbara Castle, the Labour Party’s Red Queen, but she did take 5,000 votes from her. She showed more pluck four years later in contesting North Cornwall – again without success. It was the thing then to give the gels unwinnable seats. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Trixie became involved in founding the 300 Group, aimed to ensure that half the 600 MPs were women.

But her loyalty and persistence were rewarded in 1981 when she was asked if she would accept a seat in the House of Lords.  Trixie’s entry caused a splash in Australia but she took it in her stride. There was a tussle about her title. A pedantic young pup in the office of the Garter King of Arms insisted that she have a UK territorial. She recalled Baroness Ryder of Warsaw (wife of Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC) and asked whether the young pedant could point out Warsaw on the map of the United Kingdom. And so Baroness Gardner of Parkes.

The Daily Express had some fun with the news, “Fair dinkum – Dame Edna’s made it”  For the time, The Sun may have been  closer to the truth “a cuddly modern mum with lashings of common sense.”

When she wasn’t ‘’that Australian woman’’, she said, some of the old peers who had trouble with names would call her ‘’that floral lady’.’ She joined  — or was subsequently joined  by — Baroness Garden of Frognal and Baron Gardiner of Kimbel, Baroness Greenfield and Baroness Greengross,  Baron Plant of Highfield, Baron Flower, Baron Garden, even Baron Plum. The Lords remains full of some wonderful titles even since it was shorn of all but 92 of the hereditaries in 1999.  Lord Goodlad, Lord Adonis, Lord Bragg and Lord Snape. And the women peers (‘’not peeresses,’’ said Trixie, ‘’peeresses are the wives of Peers’’) have some neat handles too – Baroness Fookes and Baroness Blood, there was Bottomley of Nettlestone, Buscombe, Mone, Stern and Hogg; Wall of New Barnet; Young of Old Scone. Sadly, Baroness Strange died in 2005.

Soon after her ennoblement, Trixie was at a function attended by the Iron Lady. Trixie modestly introduced herself. ‘’I know my dear,” nodded the PM, “I’m expecting a lot of hard work from you’’. Not long after donning the ermine Trixie succeeded the splendidly-named noble, Baroness Trumpington, as the UK’s representative at the UN Status of Women Commission. Many voluntary groups had complained of being overlooked so Trixie invited 170 women’s groups to the Lords to see what they wanted discussed at the 1985 World Conference of Women in Nairobi.  At the UN she sat between the Soviet Union and the United States and when points of interpretation arose they would defer to Trixie because ‘’she spoke Shakespeare’s English’’.

For some years she returned to the dental practice at Clerkenwell one day a week (below) – leaving behind the ermine and washing the surgery’s white coats herself at home; putting aside her coronet and fitting crowns instead.

Work in the Lords is a matter for each peer. Working peers are paid to attend. There is no salary, no secretary or personal staff and no specific constituency.  Members can embrace whatever issues they wish; even those aligned to Labor or the Tories are given a pretty free hand by the Whip. In forty years in that chamber one can embrace all manner of issues.  In her maiden speech Trixie urged tighter controls for zoos and in her time she suggested importing echidnas to fight termites in Devon. She complained about squirrels eating apricots from her trees in central London. She led a long-running campaign to rid residential areas of the nuisance of high hedges.  But the one that is best remembered occurred within five years of entering the Lords. Trixie moved an amendment to allow free dental examinations despite a tightening of National Health Service benefits.

As a dentist she had discovered, in a routine examination, a lesion in a young father’s mouth that if left undiscovered, would have led to his early death. A majority of the House were convinced and voted for Trixie’s amendment. This was not the sort of hard work Margaret Thatcher had expected of Trixie. It must have annoyed her government. In the end the Bill, when sent back to the Commons, had a financial clause attached to it so when it returned to the Lords they could not defeat or amend it. So, a hollow victory?

Trixie became convinced that it was not winning an amendment that mattered; it was winning your argument. And there were some wins. . The government was persuaded to impose the burden of proof in discrimination on employers, not women. And the law was changed so that married women, who gave up their jobs to look after a family member, were treated like single women in the same position. She prompted the introduction of P plates, championed wheel clamps and advocated random breath testing. She was influential in allowing seniors to use their free bus passes all day after morning peak hour. She  supported Plan International UK, the National Osteoporosis Society, and the War Widows Association of Great Britain.

Throughout it all, the Gardners were a solid partnership. Back in 1970 Kevin was quoted as saying, ‘’Trixie has the facility for it – and she enjoys doing it. So why shouldn’t she? I like to see her happy.’’  As well as run their dental practice, Kevin took to local government too. He was a member of Westminster City Council. In 1986-87 he was Lord Mayor , making Trixie the Lady Mayoress (right) and they would be driven to functions in the mayoral car bearing the number plate WE 1. It is difficult to believe the Queen hadn’t snaffled that one; but perhaps she regarded it as unsuitably triumphant.

The Gardners lived in a quiet cul-de-sac just near what Kevin called ‘the corner store’ – Harrods. In fact the house was built in 1953 for Harrods’ general manager. The Eighties were recalled for them the day after we met. Kevin was again acting Lord Mayor of Westminster and he and Trixie attended the opening of Malaysian Week. And while standing in the sensible shoes of the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress who should they meet but fashion’s most feted Malaysian – Jimmy Choo.

Kevin died in 2007. Their three daughters, Rachel, Sarah and Joanna (who was Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea in 2008/2009), survive them.

When we met she was 79 but there was no sign of hanging up her ermine. Kevin had said it would make for a warm dressing gown one day.  Significantly, only the week before, she had joined the majority in voting down legislation allowing euthanasia. (There were other factors but her steadfast Catholic faith was one of them.)

Death, when it comes, is not uncommon in the Lords. ‘’Lord Ackner (a former Law Lord) spoke on Thursday; he died on Sunday”, Trixie told me. Memorial services are frequent and de rigor.  Trixie was often in the list of attendees at memorial services, honouring colleagues and friends. Many of the lords take their role as Life Peers quite literally. The pacifist Lord Brockway spoke about Africa on his 99^th birthday. Lord Shinwell was still making speeches at 101. Harold Macmillan, as the Earl of Stockton and almost 90, was in the House for a debate that finished at 1.30 a.m.  ‘’Lord Stockton,’’ Trixie shouted (he was deaf and blind by then), ‘’you don’t have to go through the Division lobby.’’ ‘’I know, I know’’, he said, ‘’but I like the walk’ and got up on his two sticks and tottered off.’’ Just after she entered the Lords a venerable baroness told her, ‘’I take an active part all the time but I don’t speak any more in case I might forget what I’m saying in the middle of it.’’ As Trixie says, ‘‘If that day comes, I hope I will recognize it in the way she did.’’ 

In November 2012 she was asking questions in the Chamber about minimum wages for the carers of the aged and frail. As recently as January 2022 – she was 94 – she was still asking questions, “My Lords, is the Minister aware that so many of the major hospitals are now closing their dental facilities after hours?” And after sharing some details and offering a practical solution, she ended with “Can something more be done?”

Back to our meeting in 2006, fortified by a full english breakfast — kippers, fruit, marmalade, toast and tea (none of that Continental nonsense)  — it was time for Trixie to go. True to her motto, she was off to the House for another debate. What was the issue? Renewable energy.