MP for Rochester
Which position did Peggy Fenner hold from May 1979 to May 1983?
Peggy Fenner Dame Peggy Edith Fenner , DBE ( 12 November 1922 – 15 September 2014 ) was a British Conservative Party politician . Political career . Joining the Conservative Party in 1952 , she was elected to Sevenoaks council five years later , chairing it in 1962 and 1963 ; she also served on the West Kent education executive . She made a strong impression among Kentish Tories , and in 1964 was shortlisted ahead of 104 applicants , almost all men , to succeed Harold Macmillan at Bromley . She missed out in the final selection , then again at Brighton Kemp Town where the party was seeking — and would fail — to overturn a Labour majority of seven . Instead she was adopted for the unwinnable Newcastle-under-Lyme . After unsuccessfully fighting Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1966 , Fenner was elected MP for Rochester and Chatham at the 1970 general election . Rochester and Chatham Conservatives selected her to take on the Left-wing Labour MP Anne Kerr , and in 1970 she bettered the national swing to capture the seat by 5,341 votes . Both candidates bemoaned the fact that the other could not have found a man to defeat somewhere else , and when Peggy Fenner arrived in the Commons it was womens issues that she took up . Her first success was to force the Royal Navy to scuttle a “dial a sailor” scheme for the public to befriend sailors docking away from their home port , after Navy wives complained . She joined other Tory women in trying to amend the recently liberalised divorce laws which ended the right of the “innocent party” to veto divorce after five years . Her work on the Expenditure Select Committee impressed , and in November 1972 Heath appointed her Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Agriculture with responsibility for prices , which were becoming an issue as inflation set in . Peggy Fenner served as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture , Fisheries and Food , with responsibility for food , from November 1972 to February 1974 under Edward Heath , and again from September 1981 to September 1986 under Margaret Thatcher . Upon leaving the government in 1986 she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire . At MAFF she took through the legislation obliging food producers to put sell-by dates on their products , but spent most of her time tackling a rising tide of complaints about higher meat prices , caused by a world shortage , and explaining a 48 per cent increase in food prices in three years . When Labours Willie Hamilton complained of being charged 5p for a banana , she told him curtly : “You could certainly do with some help with your shopping . I bought six bananas for 17p recently , and I don’t have time to shop around.” Hamilton was back next week saying he had now been charged 16½p for three bananas . In the February 1974 election called by Heath over the miners’ strike , Peggy Fenner fought a tight battle with Roger Kenward , Labour , and her majority slumped to 843 . In opposition , she joined Britains contingent in the then-nominated European Parliament . She attended only a handful of sessions before Harold Wilson called another election and Labours Bob Bean ousted her by 2,418 votes . She was out of the Commons for Mrs Thatchers overthrow of Heath , and as the Tories regrouped for a return to government . She won back Rochester and Chatham in 1979 , by 2,688 votes . John Notts decision to close Chatham dockyard was a blow to Peggy Fenners constituents , many of whom took it out on their MP . And before she could launch a campaign against the closure , Mrs Thatcher , in September 1981 , gave her back her old job at MAFF . Prices were now less of an issue , so she could address concerns over quality : the conditions in which veal calves and battery hens were kept , the amount of fat in mince and water in sausages , dyes in pet food , tighter curbs on pesticides , pesticide residues on lemons that were polluting gin-and-tonics , and the unsuitability of cling film for microwave cooking . She also presided over the first raising of the Thames Barrier . At the 1983 election the Rochester and Chatham seat was abolished and Fenner was elected MP for the new constituency of Medway . She continued to hold the seat for the next fourteen years , being re-elected at the 1987 and 1992 general elections , until she lost it at the 1997 election to Labours Bob Marshall-Andrews . On the death of Baroness Jeger in 2007 , Fenner became the oldest living woman to have served as an MP in the United Kingdom . Mrs Thatcher dropped her in September 1986 in a cull of junior ministers , compensating her with a DBE . Dame Peggy became a leading campaigner against the high speed link across Kent to the Channel Tunnel . For a decade from 1987 she returned to Strasbourg as a delegate to the Council of Europe and Western European Union . The 1997 election brought boundary changes and a heavy national swing to Labour . Dame Peggy , her 75th birthday approaching , went down by 5,354 votes to the colourful barrister Bob Marshall-Andrews . Personal life . Born on 12 November 1922 in Lewisham , London , as Peggy Edith Bennett , she was cared for in infancy by her grandparents . Her parents divorced when she was three and she never saw her father again . Educated at a London County Council elementary school in Brockley , Kent she went on to attend Ide Hill School in Sevenoaks but left aged 14 going into service . In 1940 aged 18 she married architect Bernard Fenner and went into wartime factory work . The couple had one daughter . Her husband Bernard Fenner and their daughter predeceased her . She died on 15 September 2014 . References . - Times Guide to the House of Commons , Times Newspapers Limited , 1979 and 1997 editions .