So tough, even Thatcher called her scary

As a grocer's daughter, Shirley Porter could always claim a common bond with her political mentor, Margaret Thatcher.

The feisty, no-nonsense Westminster council leader shared the-then prime minister's approach to public life, giving a verbal handbagging to her officials and Labour opponents alike. Once, Mrs Thatcher was even heard to say of Dame Shirley: "Oh, she's really scary."

But her critics claim it was her very stubbornness that tipped over into the arrogance that ultimately led to her downfall.

Dame Shirley's hard edge emerged as she grew up in the shadow of her father, Jack Cohen. With the motto "pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap", he turned Tesco into a household name and generated the fortune his daughter would inherit.

She met her future husband Leslie Porter at the age of 17 and married him a few months later. But it was not until she was 39, when her daughter Linda got married, that she entered politics, claiming she would have been bored stuck at home.

Appalled by Westminster's rubbish-filled streets, she made wiping out litter her mission, along with a then-revolutionary view that ratepayers should be treated like shoppers and get value for money.

She fought for privatisation and plain English, took over as council leader, and became one of the best-known woman politicians of the Eighties.

Controversy was never far away, the first row triggered by her decision to sell three Westminster cemeteries to a property company for 5p each.

She later said: "I stood in the council chamber being heckled and jeered and thought 'What am I doing this for? I could be leading a cushy life'. Then I thought of my father, working in markets where they used to blow a whistle and people had to run to get their pitch. It was survival of the fittest. You crumble or stay and fight. Like him, I stayed and fought."

In 1994 the District Auditor gave his verdict on the "homes for votes" scandal: Dame Shirley was guilty. That year she moved to Israel, after the death of her grandson Daniel Marcus, an Israeli army sergeant. She also spent time at her home in Palm Springs, California.

In 2001 she was estimated to be worth between ?69 million and ?300 million, most directed to the Porter Foundation in Israel, a charity funding academic and other institutions.