The British politician Shirley Vivien Teresa Brittain Williams (born 1930) was a Labour party minister who later helped to form the Social Democratic party in the 1980s.

Shirley Williams was born on July 27, 1930, in London, the daughter of two eminent socialists, Sir George Catlin and Vera Brittain. She was raised comfortably in the Roman Catholic faith in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where her parents entertained T.S. Eliot, Arthur Greenwood, and other celebrities; Jawaharal Nehru bounced her on his knee when she was an infant.

Her father taught political science at Cornell University in New York and at McGill University in Montreal. Catlin was a special adviser to Wendell Willkie in 1940 when Willkie was Republican contender for the presidency of the United States. In British politics he was adviser to the Labour party from 1930 to 1979. He wrote extensively on U.S.-British cooperation. Her mother, Vera Brittain, was a feminist...