Enid Lakeman, OBE (28 November 1903 – 7 January 1995) was a British political reformer, writer and politician, noted for her long-standing championship of the

Single Transferable Vote Single transferable vote (STV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which voters cast a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate p ...

system of elections.

Biography

She was born and brought up in

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, and studied chemistry at

Bedford College, University of London Bedford College was in York Place after 1874 Bedford College was founded in London in 1849 as the first higher education college for women in the United Kingdom. In 1900, it became a constituent of the University of London. Having played a lead ...

, graduating with first-class honours in 1926. She went on to work in the chemical industry in Britain and in Germany. During the

second world war World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

she was a radar operator with the

Women's Auxiliary Air Force The Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), whose members were referred to as WAAFs (), was the female auxiliary of the Royal Air Force during World War II. Established in 1939, WAAF numbers exceeded 180,000 at its peak strength in 1943, with over 2 ...

(WAAF). In 1946, Lakeman became Research Secretary at the Proportional Representation Society, which changed its name to the

Electoral Reform Society The Electoral Reform Society (ERS) is an independent campaigning organisation based in the United Kingdom which promotes electoral reform. It seeks to replace first-past-the-post voting with proportional representation, advocating the single t ...

in 1958. This was and still is a lobby group campaigning for the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in multi-member constituencies to replace the

first-past-the-post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...

electoral system used in most British elections. She was appointed Director of the Society in 1960. In this capacity she addressed innumerable meetings, edited pamphlets, drafted the Society's submissions to official inquiries, lobbied politicians, government departments and journalists, visited schools, and wrote hundreds of letters to newspaper editors. In 1955, she wrote, with James Lambert, ''Voting in Democracies'', a detailed comparative study of electoral systems in different countries. It went through several revisions and the latest, with Lakeman as sole author, was published in 1974 under the new title ''How Democracies Vote''. This book continues to be a standard reference work on electoral systems. The Irish government in

1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third ...

and again in

1968 The year was highlighted by protests and other unrests that occurred worldwide. Events January–February * January 5 – "Prague Spring": Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. * Januar ...

tried in a referendum to abolish the use of STV in the Republic of Ireland and to revert to first-past-the-post. On both occasions, Lakeman led the Electoral Reform Society's successful campaign to retain the STV system. She was also instrumental in securing the adoption of STV in Northern Ireland in 1972. She retired as Director of the ERS in 1980 but continued as the Society's honorary editorial consultant. As her obituarist in ''The Times'' noted, "she produced an endless stream of articles and books ... and could still correct a proof more accurately than people a third of her age". In her politics, Lakeman was a lifelong activist in the

Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. __TOC__ Active liberal parties This is a li ...

(now Liberal Democrats). She stood for Parliament unsuccessfully in 1945, 1950, 1955 and 1959. In the 1960s, she was an elected member of her local borough council in Kent. She was a humanist, a vegetarian, a feminist and an internationalist. She was awarded the OBE in 1980, and received the George Hallett Award from the American Association of Political Science in 1993. She died in Kent at the age of 91.

Selected works

*Enid Lakeman, ''How Democracies Vote: A study of electoral systems'', London, 1974. *Enid Lakeman, ''Power to Elect: The case for proportional representation'', London, 1982. *Enid Lakeman, ''Twelve Democracies: Electoral systems in the European Community'', London, 1991.

References

Sources

* Eric Syddique, "Lakeman, Enid (1903-1995)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004. *"Lakeman, Enid (1903-1995)", ''Who Was Who'', London, January 2007. *"Enid Lakeman" (obituary), ''The Times'', London, 23 January 1995. *"Enid Lakeman, OBE" (obituary), ''Irish Times'', Dublin, 25 January 1995. *Martin Wainwright, "Woman for votes: Enid Lakeman" (obituary), ''The Guardian'', London, 17 January 1995. *Michael Meadowcroft, "Enid Lakeman" (obituary), ''The Independent'', London, 12 January 1995. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lakeman, Enid 1903 births 1995 deaths Lakeman, Enid British activists British women activists Voting theorists Liberal Party (UK) parliamentary candidates Women political scientists Liberal Party (UK) councillors Women councillors in England