‘Iron Lady of the town halls’ dies aged 95

As a teenager in the 1920s, my husband’s Great Aunt Beattie was the black sheep of the family. Not only did she profess a desire to go to university (unheard of in those days) but she was also going out with a ‘barrow boy’ who was, according to her parents, “going nowhere fast”. His name was Jack Cohen, and he went on to found Tesco.

Having been spurned by Beattie, who bowed under pressure, he went on to marry Sarah (Cissie) Fox and their daughter Shirley was born in Upper Clapton, east London, in 1930. She grew up in Hackney, went to Warren School for Girls in Worthing and was then sent to finishing school in Switzerland. She got married when she was just 17 to Leslie Porter.

In 1990 she was made a Dame for securing Westminster for the Conservatives that year and I was sent to interview her. She lived in a magnificent flat in Paddington and was immaculately dressed, beautifully coiffured and highly articulate. She was very nice to me but this was my first ever freelance assignment and I was terrified of her!

Shirley Cohen and Leslie Porter were married on 26 June 1949 at the New West End Synagogue. They couple had a daughter, Linda, and a son, John, who died in 2021. Leslie died in 2005.

When her children were young Shirley did a lot of charity work. She was a keen golfer and campaigned against 10 golf clubs in north London which were, she said, discriminating against Jews.

Elected to Westminster city council in 1974, she was determined to keep spending under control and not put up rates. She was fond of comparing her actions to that of a housewife watching the family’s pennies but as Tesco heiress she was in fact supremely wealthy – Vogue declared her the 20th richest woman in Europe.

She privatised things, kept the streets clean and simplified regulations so that cafés could put tables on the pavement. However ultimately she was accused of “wilful misconduct” in the way she carried out her job as leader of Westminster city council. In a mission to ensure that Labour did not gain control in her borough, she had organised a secret scheme to use millions of pounds of public money to pay potential Labour voters to move elsewhere.

She had wanted to become a councillor so she could actively do something about the rubbish in the Hyde Park ward where she lived. By 1978 she was chairwoman of the Westminster highways committee, patrolling the streets in her Mini and reporting back when she saw rubbish or a broken bulb in a street lamp and demanding that something be done about it. Schoolchildren were encouraged to carry brooms and get to work while singing “pick up your litter and put it in the bin”. She had great impact on cleaning up Soho, too, imposing regulations on the sex shops meaning that the number of them fell dramatically.

A staunch Thatcherite, she called herself “the other grocer’s daughter”, and emulated the Prime Minister’s power dressing style and manner. She was delighted to be known “the Iron Lady of the town halls”.

In December 2001 five law lords ruled that Porter and her deputy leader, David Weeks, were guilty of wilful misconduct in the “homes for votes” scandal and were liable to repay the cost to the council, estimated to be £26 million. In 2004 she settled, paying £12.3 million to settle the dispute.

By now Dame Shirley was splitting her time between the US and Israel, where her husband was chancellor of Tel Aviv University. She became a governor of the university and funded various projects through the Porter Foundation including the Porter School of Environmental Studies. The National Portrait Gallery was also a beneficiary of the Foundation and has a room called the Porter Gallery.

Dame Shirley Porter, 20 November 1930 – 2 May 2026