Susan Slipman (born 3 August 1949)
/ref> was President of the National Union of Students between 1977 and 1978. She later joined the

National Union of Public Employees The National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) was a British trade union which existed between 1908 and 1993. It represented public sector workers in local government, the Health Service, universities, and water authorities. History The union w ...

. Since then she has held a wide range of appointments and offices in the public sector and the field of training and education.

Biography

The youngest of three sisters from a close and happy, though often poor, working-class Jewish family and a graduate in English of the

University of Wales, Lampeter University of Wales, Lampeter () was a university in Lampeter, Wales. Founded in 1822, and incorporated by royal charter in 1828, it was the oldest Academic degree, degree awarding institution in Wales, with limited degree awarding powers sinc ...

, Slipman went on to take a postgraduate course at the

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

, from where she was elected NUS vice president in 1974, and a PGCE at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

. A member of the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

, she was elected President of the NUS on the Broad Left ticket. She subsequently served as a member of the executive committee of the Communist Party before joining the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Form ...

as a founder member in 1981. Supported by

David Owen David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen, (born 2 July 1938) is a British politician and physician who served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs as a Labour Party MP under James Callaghan from 1977 to 1979, and later ...

, Slipman stood for the SDP in the working-class constituencies of

Basildon Basildon ( ) is a town in Borough of Basildon, the borough of the same name, in the county of Essex, England. It had a recorded population of 115,955 at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 census. In 1931, the town had a population of 1,159. ...

in 1983 and Hayes & Harlington in 1987, coming third on both occasions. In the late 1970s Slipman served as an executive member of the

National Council for Civil Liberties Liberty, formerly, and still formally, called the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), is an advocacy group and membership organisation based in the United Kingdom, which challenges unjust laws, protects civil liberties and promotes huma ...

. Between 1986 and 1995 she was Director of the National Council for One Parent Families which she rallied in support of the Conservative Government's

Child Support Agency The Child Support Agency (CSA) was a delivery arm of the Department for Work and Pensions (Child Maintenance Group) in Great Britain and the former Department for Social Development (Northern Ireland), Department for Social Development in Nor ...

. Slipman went on to run the London TEC Council (the co-ordinating organisation for the

Training and Enterprise Council Training is teaching, or developing in oneself or others, any skills and knowledge or fitness that relate to specific useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one's capability, capacity, productivity and performance. ...

s in London. From 1992 she was a member of the Working Group on Women's Issues to the

Secretary of State for Employment The secretary of state for employment was a position in the Cabinet of the United Kingdom. In , it was merged with secretary of state for education to make the secretary of state for education and employment. In , the employment functions were h ...

. She has also written a number of books aimed at improving the situation of women, and single parents, in the workplace. In 1994 Slipman received an

honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

Doctor of Arts The Doctor of Arts (D.A.; occasionally D.Arts or Art.D. from the Latin language, Latin ''artium doctor'') is a List of academic disciplines, discipline-based terminal degree, terminal doctorate, doctoral academic degree, degree that was originall ...

from

Oxford Brookes University Oxford Brookes University (OBU; formerly known as Oxford Polytechnic) is a public university, public university in Oxford, England. It is a new university, having received university status through the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. Th ...

. She was awarded an OBE in the

1994 New Year Honours The New Year Honours 1994 were appointments by most of the sixteen Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries, and honorary ones to citizens of other ...

. In 1998, Slipman became Director of Environmental and Social Responsibility for the National Lottery operators, Camelot Group, where she stayed until 2003. She then moved to become Chairman of the UK's

Financial Ombudsman Service The Financial Ombudsman Service is an ombudsman in the United Kingdom. It was established in 2000, and given statutory powers in 2001 by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, to help settle disputes between consumers and UK-based busi ...

. In 2005 she became a director of the Foundation Trust Network, working with

foundation hospitals An NHS foundation trust is a semi-autonomous organisational unit within the National Health Service in England. They have a degree of independence from the Department of Health and Social Care (and, until the abolition of SHAs in 2013, their loc ...

within the

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

References

List of NUS presidents

Sue Slipman appointed chairman of the Financial Ombudsman Service
2003. * - PDF link {{DEFAULTSORT:Slipman, Sue Alumni of the University of Wales, Lampeter Presidents of the National Union of Students (United Kingdom) Communist Party of Great Britain members Social Democratic Party (UK) parliamentary candidates Living people Jewish British politicians 1949 births National Council for Civil Liberties people Alumni of the University of Leeds People associated with Oxford Brookes University Officers_of_the_Order_of_the_British_Empire