Margaret Mary Beckett is a British Labour politician and Member of Parliament (MP) for Derby South

Margaret Mary Beckett is a British Labour politician and Member of Parliament (MP) for Derby South.Margaret Jackson was born in 1943, in Ashton-under-Lyne, into a working-class family. Her father was an English carpenter and her mother an Irish Roman Catholic. Her sister is a Catholic nun. She was educated at the Notre Dame High School for Girls (a state-school in Norwich), the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where she qualified as a metallurgist.In 1961, Jackson joined Associated Electrical Industries as a student apprentice in metallurgy. She joined the Transport and General Workers Union in 1964 and remains a member to this day. She joined the University of Manchester in 1966 as an experiment officer in its metallurgy department. In 1970 Jackson went to work for the Labour Party as a researcher in industrial policy.She married party official Lionel "Leo" Beckett in Lincoln in 1979. She was Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1992 to 1994 and was briefly its leader in 1994 following the premature death of John Smith. In Tony Blair's government, she held a series of Cabinet offices, including Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Foreign Secretary