BARONESS WILLIAMS’S surviving “Gang of Four” colleagues paid tribute to her at a Westminster Cathedral memorial service yesterday. Lord Rodgers read out a letter he had written about her while they were at Oxford together 70 years before. It said Shirley Williams, right, had “mental ability, physical energy, and ambition” but “could be ruthless, and occasionally she fibs”. In 1981, she and Bill Rodgers, David Owen and Roy Jenkins broke from Labour to form the Social Democratic Party, which became the Liberal Democrats.
Williams died last year, but was able to have only a small funeral. About 250 people attended yesterday’s ceremony, including Owen and Jacob Rees-Mogg, who recalled inviting her to speak to a “packed room” when he was at Eton. He told us the service was “beautifully done” and that he enjoyed Rogers’s “humorous speech”. Rees-Mogg fondly remembers the baronness, who was friend of his late father, as being “always charming and kindly”.
