Shirley Porter became a magistrate before entering local politics. Looking back at that time, she said "I remember my great lack of confidence, that I came in there and for the first time and I wasn't somebody’s daughter, somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother. That’s a very very mind-boggling feeling." In 1974, she was elected to Westminster City Council as a Conservative councillor for Hyde Park Ward. In the early 1980s, she chaired the Environment Committee, calling for strict enforcement of litter laws.