Better known through her parliamentary work as Baroness Masham of Ilton, the Dowager Countess of Swinton was a distinguished Para-lympian who in the course of three Paralympic Games – in Rome (1960), Tokyo (1964) and Tel Aviv (1968) – won gold, silver and bronze medals in both swimming and table tennis. Created a crossbencher in 1970, at the time of her death at the age of 87 she was the longest serving peeress in the House of Lords.
Lady Masham was a former vice-president of the Catholic Union and a trustee of the Margaret Beaufort Institute. She regularly attended the weekly Mass in Parliament, and was unashamedly bold about her faith. In the wake of the murder of Sir David Amess MP she spoke impassionedly about the importance of priests being allowed access to serious crime scenes to administer the last rites when necessary.
Born in 1935 to Sir Ronald Sinclair of Dunbeath, Bt, and his wife, Reba, the future Lady Masham was educated at Heathfield School and the London Polytechnic, which is now the University of Westminster. In 1959 she married David Cunliffe-Lister – who would succeed his grandfather as Earl of Swinton in 1972 – but not before she had suffered life-changing injuries in a riding accident.
During a point-to-point in the spring of 1958 the 22-year-old Susan Sinclair was thrown from her horse, which then landed on top of her. Her spine was fractured in three places and when she was released from Stoke Mandeville Hospital nine months later she was paralysed from the chest down. Spending the rest of her life in a wheelchair, she became a champion for the disabled; she founded the Spinal Injuries Association in 1975.
As well as her advocacy for the disabled, Lady Masham also took an interest in child-welfare issues, prison reform, the rehabilitation of drug addicts and the care of people suffering from AIDS. A full brief also included time as a borstal visitor and as a member of Lord Longford’s pornography commission. In all this she relied on the support of Lord Swinton, who had been among her first carers and had asked her to marry him despite her injuries.
A convert to Catholicism, she was also a doughty anti-abortion campaigner and protested loudly against euthanasia. In 2008 she tabled an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to protect the lives of unborn children with a disability. Lord Alton of Liverpool said in tribute that Lady Masham “radiated goodness” and described her as having been “an inspirational woman, totally dedicated to the service of others”.
While acknowledging that the issues surrounding disability were complicated, Lady Masham nevertheless frequently expressed frustration that the lives of disabled people were often impeded by thoughtlessness. At Rome in 1960 the Paralympic village was built with steps; the European Commission building in Brussels had lavatory doors that were too narrow for wheelchair access.
Having herself experienced the ordeal of having to be carried onto an aeroplane when no other option was available, when a woman with multiple sclerosis was forced to bump her way down an aircraft’s steps on her bottom Lady Masham raised the matter in the Lords. “Make them aware of other disabled people,” her pioneering doctor and mentor Sir Ludwig Guttmann had urged when the surprise news of her ennoblement broke.
With Guttman she campaigned vigorously against plans to cut the number of beds at Stoke Mandeville, calling the state of provision at the hospital “a national scandal”. Meanwhile she endorsed bills that obliged young riders to wear helmets, opposed means-testing of disability benefits, supported the rights of disabled drivers, and ensured that “right to buy” was extended to disabled people living in adapted council houses.
Lady Masham sat on various all-party committees, and also led a Home Office working group on young people and alcohol. The latter recommended banning under-18s from drinking and television drinks advertisements; she was not impressed by the government response. Outside Westminster she served as president of the North Yorkshire Red Cross, the Yorkshire Association for the Disabled and the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy.
Other charitable endeavours included work with the Association of Occupational Therapists, the British Disabled Drivers’ Trust and the British Sports Association for the Disabled. In the course of her borstal work she once challenged two young able-bodied men to a game of table tennis from her chair, which she won. One of them later recalled that she was “skilled, ruthless and quicker than any of us had expected”.
Sue Masham determinedly overcame circumstances that might easily have broken the spirit of a less-determined person, and in doing so inspired countless others to believe that even after devastating injuries their lives continued to have purpose and potential. Passionate about human dignity, she was a standard-bearer for the intrinsic value of life from conception to natural death – and British public life is much the poorer without her.
The Dowager Countess of Swinton (Lady Masham of Ilton) DL, April 14, 1935 – March 12, 2023.
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