My friend Beryl Skelly, who has died aged 101, was a secretary to two Labour party leaders, Clement Attlee and Hugh Gaitskell, in the 1950s and 60s. Taken on by Attlee shortly after his defeat in the 1951 general election, she remained as his secretary until his resignation in 1955, and was appointed MBE. When Gaitskell was elected to take over as party leader, he asked Beryl to be his secretary, and over the following eight years the pair developed a close working relationship until Gaitskell’s sudden death at the age of 56 in 1963.
Born in Llanelli, south Wales, Beryl went straight into the civil service from school, at first working in Wales and then Doncaster. After the second world war she moved to London. A staunch supporter of the Labour party, she successfully applied to be secretary to Manny Shinwell, who served as a cabinet minister in Attlee’s postwar government.
