Slater, née Evans, was born in Tunstall, Staffordshire, on 3 July 1903.[1] Educated at Hanley High School and Dudley Teachers' Training College, she was National Organiser for the Co-operative Party from 1942 to 1953, and a local councillor in Stoke-on-Trent from 1933 to 1965.[1]
Slater was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Stoke-on-Trent North at a by-election in 1953, and served until her retirement at the 1966 general election.[2][3] From 1964 to 1966, she was a Government whip, the first woman to become one, with the formal title of Lord of the Treasury.[4]
Ruth Smeeth writes that Slater saw her role in Parliament as "being a practical advocate for the working-class, especially working-class women ... As her parliamentary colleague Laurie Pavitt MP once wrote of her, Harriet was Stoke-on-Trent. She knew what mattered to the people she represented, because she was one of them."[1] Slater's maiden speech was about racial justice, made spontaneously because of her strong feelings about equality.[1]
She was married to Frederick Slater, whom she met through the Co-operative movement.[1]
Slater was granted a life peerage on her retirement from Parliament.[5]
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