Peggy Jay

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Margaret Christian "Peggy" Jay (née Garnett) (4 January 1913 – 21 January 2008) was an English Labour councillor.

She was born as Margaret Christian Garnett.

As a young girl, Peggy Garnett attended St Paul's Girls' School in London, where she befriended Shiela Grant Duff. She went up to Somerville College, Oxford in 1931, but left two years later to marry Douglas Jay. Joining the Labour Party, she was recruited by Herbert Morrison to be a candidate for the London County Council (LCC); from 1934, she represented Hackney South, then Battersea South, and finally Battersea North. Later, she was elected to the new Greater London Council before losing her seat in 1967.[1]

She left the Labour Party in 1981 for the newly formed Social Democratic Party, not returning until shortly before her death. She was the last survivor of the "Hampstead middle-class Labour grandes dames" whom Morrison had groomed to take over the LCC.[2]

Family[]

She married politician Douglas Jay in 1933, aged 20. They had four children, but the marriage ended in divorce. A son, Peter Jay, is a journalist, leading economist and a former British Ambassador to the United States. Peter Jay was married Margaret Callaghan, the daughter of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party Jim Callaghan, who went onto become Leader of the House of Lords and Minister for Women and Equalities under Tony Blair. Their twin daughters, Helen and Catherine, achieved a fashionable profile in the 1960s.[3], and at one time her son-in-law, married to Helen, was Rupert Pennant-Rea, a former deputy Governor of the Bank of England.[4][5]

Her niece is Virginia Bottomley, Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone, a Conservative politician and life peer.[6] Her nephew is Lord Hunt of Chesterton, and her great-nephew is Tristram Hunt, former Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central and Shadow Secretary of State for Education, and now Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum.[7]

External links[]

  1. ^ Obituary, timesonline.co.uk; accessed 2 April 2014.
  2. ^ Obituary, guardian.co.uk; accessed 6 February 2016.
  3. ^ Lesley Garner (26 March 1995). "Twin faces of a fast decade". The Independent. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  4. ^ Obituary, independent.co.uk; accessed 2 April 2014.
  5. ^ Obituary, guardian.co.uk; accessed 2 April 2014.
  6. ^ Obituary[dead link], telegraph.co.uk; accessed 2 April 2014.
  7. ^ Stewart, Heather (13 January 2017). "Tristram Hunt to quit as MP to become V&A director". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
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