Biography

Clare Short was Secretary of State for International Development from 1997 to May 2003. DFID was a new Ministry created after the 1997 general election to promote policies for sustainable development and the elimination of poverty.

Of Irish ancestry, Ms Short was born in Birmingham on 15 February 1946. She was educated at St Paul's Grammar School, Birmingham, and at the Universities of Keele and Leeds. She graduated as Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Political Science.

She previously worked as a Civil Servant at the Home Office, as a Director of Youthaid and the Unemployment Unit and as a Director of AFFOR, a community based organisation promoting racial equality in Birmingham. She entered the House of Commons in 1983 as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Ladywood, which she has held since then, and is the area where she was born and grew up.

From 1996 until the 1997 General Election she was Opposition spokesperson on Overseas Development. She was Shadow Minister for Women from 1993 to 1995 and Shadow Secretary of State for Transport from 1995 to 1996. She has been Opposition spokesperson on Environment Protection, Social Security and Employment.

A member of the Home Affairs Select Committee from 1983-85, she was Chair of the All-Party Group on Race Relations from 1985-1986, member of Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) from 1988-1997 and Chair of the NEC Women's Committee from 1993-1996.

In 2003, Ms Short resigned from the Government over the Iraq war and in 2006, she resigned the Labour whip.  She now sits as an Independent.

Since 2003; she has been a member of the International Advisory Board for the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (GDAF) and in 2004; she became an Associate of Oxford Research Group.

Since 2006, Ms Short has been a member of the Policy Advisory Board of Cities Alliance, which is an alliance of the World Bank, UN –HABITAT, local government and development partners committed to meeting the UN target to develop cities without slums.  

She serves on the Board of Trustees of Tiri, is a member of the Advisory Committee of International Lawyers for Africa and also a member of the Parliamentary Network for Nuclear Disarmament.  She Chairs the International Advisory Board of the Cranfield Masters in Security Sector Management Programme and is Chair of a Working Group on Mining in the Philippines.  She is also Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Trafficking of Women and Children.

In November 2004, Ms Short’s book “An Honourable Deception? New Labour, Iraq, and the Misuse of Power” was published as an attempt to explain why Tony Blair did what he did on Iraq so that lessons could be learned and things put right.  In 2005, it was awarded Political Book of the Year by Channel 4.

Widowed with one son, she lists swimming and her family as her main leisure pursuits.