Ruth Henig, Baroness Henig

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Ruth Beatrice Henig, Baroness Henig CBE, DL (born Ruth Beatrice Munzer on 10 November 1943) is a British academic historian and Labour Party politician.

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[edit] Family

Her parents were Kurt and Elfrieda Munzer, Jewish refugees who came to the United Kingdom from Holland in 1940. Henig was married in 1966 to fellow-academic Stanley Henig, who was then a Labour Member of Parliament (MP). They have two sons, and divorced in 1993. She remarried in 1994 to Jack Johnstone.

[edit] Academic career

Henig was educated at Wyggeston Girls' Grammar School in Leicester, and at Bedford College, London, where she graduated in 1965 with a B.A. in history. She was awarded a PhD in history from Lancaster University in 1978, where she was a lecturer in Modern European History. She has written several books and pamphlets on 20th-century international history.

She served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities from 1997 to 2000, and in April 2006, she was one of six people to receive the first Honorary Fellowships of Lancaster University.

[edit] Political career

Henig was a Labour member of Lancashire County Council from 1981 to 2005, serving as the Council's chair from 1999 to 2000. She was also Chair of Lancashire Police Authority from 1995 to 2005 and chair of the Association of Police Authorities from 1997 to 2005, when she became the Association's president. She was also a member of the National Criminal Justice Board from 2003 to 2005.

At the 1992 general election, she stood as Labour candidate for her husband's former parliamentary seat of Lancaster. She failed to unseat the sitting Conservative MP Elaine Kellett-Bowman, but reduced the Conservative majority to 2,000,[1] down from 6,500 in 1987.[2]

Henig was awarded a CBE in 2000 for services to policing, and in 2002 was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant for Lancashire.

She was made a life peer on 8 June 2004 as Baroness Henig, of Lancaster in the County of Lancashire.

On 20 December 2006 the Home Secretary Dr John Reid MP appointed Lady Henig as Chairman of the Security Industry Authority (aka the “SIA”)[3], a NDPB tasked with the regulation of the private security industry.

[edit] Interests

Lady Henig's main leisure activity is playing Bridge, having played for Lancashire since the early 1990s, and currently for the House of Lords team. Henig is also a keen football fan, supporting Leicester City FC.

[edit] References