Ruth Henig, Baroness Henig

The Right Honourable The Baroness Henig CBEJPDL
Official portrait, 2019
Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords
In office 5 March 2018 – 29 February 2024
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal
In office 8 June 2004 – 29 February 2024 Life peerage
Personal details
Born	Ruth Beatrice Munzer (1943-11-10)10 November 1943 Leicester,England
Died	29 February 2024(2024-02-29)(aged 80)
Political party	Labour
Spouses	Stanley Henig ​ ​ (m.1966;div.1993)​ Jack Johnstone ​ ​ (m.1994; died 2013)​
Children	2, includingSimon
Alma mater	Wyggeston Girls Grammar School University of London Lancaster University
Occupation	Historian politician

Ruth Beatrice Henig, Baroness Henig,CBE,JP,DL(néeMunzer;10 November 1943 – 29 February 2024) was a British academic historian andLabourpolitician.

Family

Ruth Beatrice Munzer was born on 10 November 1943 to Kurt and Elfrieda Munzer, who wereJewish refugeeswho came to the United Kingdom from the Netherlands in 1940. Henig was married in 1966 to fellow academicStanley Henig,who shortly afterward became a Labourmember of Parliament.They had two children and divorced in 1993. Their son,Simon Henig,is the former leader of theDurham County Council,former chair of theNorth East Combined Authority,and a lecturer in politics atSunderland University.She remarried in 1994 to Jack Johnstone.

Academic career

Henig was educated atWyggeston Girls Grammar SchoolinLeicester,and atBedford College, London,where she graduated in 1965 with aB.A.in history. She was awarded a PhD in history fromLancaster Universityin 1978, where she was a lecturer in Modern European History.

Henig served asDeanof 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.

Selected works

Henig wrote several books and pamphlets on 20th-century international history, including:

• Versailles and After, 1919−1933(Lancaster Pamphlets, 1990)
• The Origins of the Second World War, 1933−1941(Lancaster Pamphlets, 1990)
• The Origins of the First World War(Lancaster Pamphlets, 2001)
• The League of Nations: The Makers of the Modern World (Haus Publishing, 2010)
• The Weimar Republic, 1919−1933(Lancaster Pamphlets, 2015)
• The Peace That Never Was: A History of the League of Nations(Haus Publishing, 2019)

Political career

Henig was a Labour member ofLancashire County Councilfrom 1981 to 2005, serving as the Council's chair from 1999 to 2000. She was also Chair ofLancashirePolice Authorityfrom 1995 to 2005 and chair of theAssociation of Police Authoritiesfrom 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. For many years she was a magistrate and a school governor.

At the1992 general election,she stood as Labour candidate for her husband's formerparliamentaryseat ofLancaster.She failed to unseat the sittingConservativeMPElaine Kellett-Bowman,but reduced the Conservative majority to just under 3,000,[1]down from 6,500 in1987.[2]

Henig was appointed aCommander of the Order of the British Empire(CBE) in the2000 Birthday Honoursfor services to the police,and in 2002 was appointed aDeputy lieutenant(DL) forLancashire.

Henig was made alife peeron8 June 2004asBaroness Henig, of Lancaster in the County ofLancashire.She became adeputy speaker of the House of Lordsin 2018.

In June 2013 Henig was awarded The Association of Security Consultant's Award, part of the Imbert Prize named after the former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the Lord Lieutenant of Greater London. In an industry first, the prize, awarded to the person making the most notable contribution to the security industry in the preceding year was shared with Don Randall, the head of security to the Bank of England. It was judged that Baroness Henig's contributions to the industry as Chair of the Security Industry Authority in overseeing the regulatory overhaul and building of a new and modern, fit-for-purpose regulatory regime made her an outstanding candidate.

On 20 December 2006,John Reid,the home secretary, appointed Henig as Chairman of theSecurity Industry Authority(SIA)[3],anon-departmental public bodytasked with the regulation of the private security industry. Having stepped down as chair from the SIA after six years in March 2013, Henig continued to work towards building a unified voice for the industry having just been appointed president ofThe Security Institutein April 2016. She was non-executive chairman with UK firm SecuriGroup and, as of March 2019, the chairman of the Register of Chartered Security Professionals.

Interests

Henig's main leisure activity was playing bridge. She played for Lancashire since the early 1990s, and was the captain of the House of Lords team. Henig was also a keen football fan, supportingLeicester City FCfor over 60 years.

Death

Henig died on 29 February 2024, at the age of 80.

References

• "Former Dean Made Life Peer".Lancaster University.7 May 2004. Archived fromthe originalon 11 June 2011.Retrieved21 September2006.
• "Senior police adviser made a peer".BBC News.1 May 2004.Retrieved21 September2006.
• "SIA Chairman, Baroness Ruth Henig".The SIA. 15 January 2007.Retrieved29 May2007.
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages