The moment I was selected was
the greatest experience of my life.
What a privilege it was to have
the support of the House to do that job.
And what a pleasure it was for me
all those years to be in that role.
I loved every minute of it.
I was never very conscious of being a woman.
I was born a woman, but I can work,
and I can do this job just as much as a man can do it.
I was part of the House of Commons.
I was conducting the proceedings of the House.
It didn't matter to me whether I wore a skirt.
I wore a skirt, and I was a woman.
But I didn't have any feelings about that at all.
Whether the Members did or not, I'm not sure.
I wouldn't know about that.
I felt, in the early days, they felt that well,
"She's a woman; she'd roll over like a pussy cat."
"We can get what we want; so many points of order."
And this is where, I think, the steeliness comes in.
Give them an inch, and then they'll
hang themselves is what I thought about it.
- Madam Speaker, given the fact that the Craven
attitude of Members opposite towards those rail unions
who have caused such an enormous...
- Order! Order! Order!
The Honourable Gentleman will resume his seat immediately.
Immediately! Immediately!
I shall name the Honourable Member.
What I was very conscious about was
I had to do the job to the best of my ability,
because I couldn't let my own sex down.
The other feeling too was that I had to do well in the Chair
because I was the first Speaker to come from the
opposition benches, which is hugely important to me.
- The main question is that Miss Betty Boothroyd
do take the Chair of this House as Speaker.
As many as are of that opinion, say "Aye."
- Aye!
- It seems to me, there's always been the tradition
of having portraits of Speakers,
so I wasn't surprised when I was asked
to have my portrait painted.
And the choice of the artist, really, was left to me.
I knew it was an area I know little about,
but I did examine what other artists had done,
and I liked the work of Andrew Festing very much.
And I was glad to meet him, and he was very good
at doing my face and hands and toes and things,
and I was amused because he took the robes,
the gold robes, home at the weekend,
and his wife stuffed the shape of a mannequin
in the bathroom and with bath towels,
and he put the robe over there, and he painted it like that.
So it didn't take him very long to do me.
Well, together, Andrew Festing and I chose the backdrop
which is the Monarch's bed which I
treasured very much in the State Rooms.
But, also, it depicts my coat of arms, which I enjoyed,
which shows the white rose of Yorkshire I was very proud of,
the Speaker's mace going through it,
and the millrinds which represent West Bromwich,
the constituency I represented,
and the wise old owl of my school,
Dewsbury Technical College.
But the saving grace, the lovely thing about that,
is that it is a diamond, because it was said in heraldry
that women could not have shields,
which is a load of nonsense of course,
so I had to have a diamond.
But on top of that diamond is a green bow,
which you have to depict in heraldry
if you've never been married.
It says, "The forget me not bow"
which means you're still available.
The motto I chose is hugely important to me
because it represents, I think, so much of me.
I'm not a person who makes long speeches,
I come to the point, I'm very North Country,
I am very direct with people,
and it sums up, I think, my personality.
I only speak when I've got something to say,
and when I've something to say,
I am trying to serve my country
and to serve the philosophy that
I cherish very much: "I speak to serve."
Order! Order!
As for the portrait itself, I quite like it,
but I think I look rather benign,
rather sweet and long-tempered and very gracious,
where it doesn't show my steeliness.
But, of course, a portrait is
in the eye of the artist, isn't it?
But it was a great privilege to serve the House
for all those years, to have the confidence of the House,
and to do a job that I did, too.
It's a place that I love, and I was hugely
privileged and happy to have that role.