Beata Brookes, British politician, died at 84

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Beata Ann Brookes, born January 21, 1931 and died August 18, 2015, she was a British social worker, company secretary and Conservative Party politician.

She served ten years as Member of the European Parliament for North Wales, and made several attempts to obtain election to the House of Commons.

She has sometimes been nicknamed the “Celtic Iron Lady”
Brookes was educated at Lowther College in Abergele and went on to the University of Wales, Bangor.

She obtained a scholarship from the State Department to study politics in the US. She began to work as company secretary and director of a North Wales firm.
Her early interest in politics took her into the Conservative Party and she was elected to the executive of the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations.

She was also elected as a Conservative to Rhyl Urban District Council, and in the 1955 general election she fought Widnes which was a marginal Labour-held seat. She lost by only 1,449 votes.
She later worked for Denbighshire County Council as a social worker, and as a farmer.

In 1961 she was Conservative candidate in the Warrington by-election, a safe Labour seat.

At the 1964 general election she fought in Manchester Exchange. She was appointed by the Conservative government to the Welsh Hospital Board in 1963, where she remained for eleven years. Although she had married Anthony Arnold, in May 1963 they were divorced and she announced that she wished to remain known as Miss Beata Brookes.