Theresa Stewart

Theresa Stewart (née Raisman; 24 August 1930 – 11 November 2020 ) was a British Labour Party politician and the first (and as of 2024, only) female leader of Birmingham City Council, a position which she attained in October 1993, succeeding Dick Knowles,

Political career Stewart was elected as a councillor for Birmingham City Council in a by-election in 1970. She remained a councillor, for Billesley ward, until 2002.

She was also a member of the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board in the late 1960s. She exposed failings in the hospital system including a ward kept locked for the use of the family and friends of consultants. The issue was taken up by a local newspaper.

She was a founder of BPAS (then the Birmingham Pregnancy Advisory Group), campaigned for CND, for women's right to choose, for the family allowance to be paid to the mother as well as hosting striking miners and steelworkers in her home.

She was member and chair of Social Services in Birmingham in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1991 she, with 20 other councillors, was expelled from the Labour Group, for opposing cuts to a children's home.

However, in 1993 she was elected, by her fellow Labour councillors, as leader of Birmingham City Council. She moved the council from spending on infrastructure and convention centres to a focus on social services and education.

She also hosted G8 in 1998, welcoming Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin to the city. However the photo she was most proud of was the one with Nelson Mandela, which sat proudly on her mantelpiece. She was Jewish.

Midland Metro named an AnsaldoBreda T-69 tram in her honour. It has since been withdrawn from service, along with the rest of its class, and—despite initial plans for Birmingham Museums to preserve it —scrapped in July 2022.

She died on 11 November 2020, at the age of 90, following a long illness.