Mary Cameron, mother of PM David who gave decades of public service and was a model of discretion

Yahoo

07-02-2025

Mary Cameron, who has died aged 90, was a voluntary Justice of the Peace for nearly 40 years and mother of the former prime minister, David (now Lord) Cameron.
A modest figure, she was unintentionally propelled into the limelight in 2016, when she signed a petition against Conservative plans to close 44 children's centres in Oxfordshire, at one of which she volunteered. The centre shut after a spending review instituted by her younger son – David Cameron, the then-prime minister.
The row escalated at Prime Minister's Questions, when the Labour MP Angela Eagle bellowed: 'Ask your mother!', in reference to government cuts.
Turning to the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, David Cameron responded: 'Ask my mother? I think I know what my mother would say. I think she'd look across the Dispatch Box and she'd say, 'Put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem.' '
Corbyn had been attacked for his tatty clothes and for failing to sing God Save the Queen at a Battle of Britain memorial service.
Shortly afterwards, Cameron raced out of the chamber to ring his mother, to warn her that there might be a minor blast of press attention.
In 2017, Mary Cameron won the Oldie's Mother Knows Best award for the valiant campaign against her own son.
Receiving the award, she confessed to being astonished to see that Jeremy Corbyn had taken her advice: 'I should share this with the Leader of the Opposition – ever since that Prime Minister's Questions, he has smartened himself up and looks reasonably respectable. I only wish my family were so obedient and I'd like to say good luck to him.'
Mary Cameron was a dignified presence during her son's six years in Downing Street. It was a difficult time – her beloved husband, Ian Cameron, died in 2010, only four months after their son became prime minister.
Whenever she was grilled by the press, she remained a model of discretion. The Daily Mail sketchwriter Quentin Letts asked Mary Cameron for a comment on the day her son became Tory leader in 2005. 'She fixed me with the disdainful look a tigress might cast at a dung beetle,' recalled Letts.
After Mary Cameron won the Oldie award, David Cameron said: 'Mum has a great sense of public service and doing the right thing. She never lectured us about these things – that was not her style. But as children we watched her serve as a magistrate, year after year, weighing up difficult decisions with judgment and compassion.
'She just had – and has – a simple and straightforward sense of what is good and right and fair.'
Mary Cameron had encouraged her son's interest in politics as a teenager.
'Mum said you must talk to Cousin Ferdy,' David Cameron recalled. (Cousin Ferdy is Ferdinand Mount, head of Margaret Thatcher's policy unit from 1982 to 1983.) Mary Cameron rang Mount up, asking if the 16-year-old David could interview him for the school magazine. Mount said he was busy, and that he was restricted by the Official Secrets Act, but might be in touch.
Moments later, Cameron rang up his office to book an appointment. He turned up at Downing Street, in Mount's words, 'looking pink and perky, not yet the size he grew to, but abounding in self-confidence'.
Mary Fleur Mount was born on October 22 1934 in Wasing, Berkshire, the second of three daughters of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir William Malcolm Mount, 2nd Bt, and Elizabeth Nance, née Llewellyn.
She grew up with her sisters, Cylla and Clare, at Wasing Place, once identified as the original of Rosings in Pride and Prejudice. The family nanny, Gwen Hoare, looked after the Mount girls and, later, Mary Cameron's children.
The Mounts started in business as Mount & Page, a stationery firm on Tower Hill, London, making maps for Samuel Pepys's Admiralty. The company diversified into manufacturing vitriol, used for ink and dye. With the proceeds, John Mount bought the Berkshire estate and built Wasing Place in 1770.
The first baronet, Sir William Mount, was Conservative MP for South Berkshire between 1900 and 1906 and between 1910 and 1922. Two previous Mounts had been Conservative MPs in the 19th century, but none attained the high office of David Cameron.
Mary Mount was educated at St Andrew's, Pangbourne, before working for Anthony Blunt at the Courtauld Institute. When he was unmasked as a Soviet spy in 1979, she was so disturbed that she resorted to sleeping pills. 'We teased Dad about Reds in his bed, not just underneath,' said David Cameron.
In 1962, she married Ian Cameron, a stockbroker, later moving to the Old Rectory at Peasemore in Berkshire.
Ian Cameron had been born with unformed legs, but this did not affect his brio for life. David Cameron said: 'His answer was to play cricket, tennis… riding. He was a great dancer, a great bon viveur.
'Even when he was a double amputee, he'd get himself on a train at Didcot and go to work. He never retired. He was a dynamo.'
Mary Cameron threw herself into charity work and local life at Peasemore Church. She sat as a voluntary magistrate for nearly 40 years. 'I used to come home with stories to warn the children about the perils of doing the wrong things,' she recalled.
She adjudicated in the case of the Newbury bypass protesters, including the eco pin-up boy, Swampy. She sat, too, in civil disorder cases involving women at the nearby Greenham Common peace camp. When her younger sister, Clare Currie, was involved in an anti-cruise missile protest, Mary Cameron recused herself.
She was vice-chairman of the Newbury Spring Festival, a local music and arts festival. She enjoyed watching racing – on the flat and jumps – but was not that keen on horses themselves. Still, she selflessly drove her elder children, Alex and Tania, to riding events across the county.
Tania recalled: 'She could be seen traipsing across muddy fields or along busy roads in pursuit of an errant pony that had removed its rider.'
An enthusiastic gardener, she was still potting up tulips and planting roses in her mid-eighties. She enjoyed accompanying David Cameron to watch Wimbledon.
David Cameron describes his mother as 'a classic 'giver back' and very rock-like to her friends – through their own trials and tribulations'. She was selfless in her dedication to her husband in his final years.
She developed Alzheimer's, some time after David Cameron launched his 2012 'National Dementia Challenge', with its plan to double research spending. After leaving office he became President of Alzheimer's Research UK, revealing that his mother had the condition.
Mary Cameron's elder son, Alexander Cameron KC, died in 2023. Her three other children, Tania, David and Clare, survive her.
Mary Cameron, born October 22 1934, died February 2 2025
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