Peggy Jay

Margaret Christian Jay, Baroness Jay (née Garnett), was born on 4 January 1913 and died on 21 January 2008. She was a member of the Labour Party and was active in local government in London from 1934 until 1967. She served on the London County Council (LCC) and later on the Greater London Council (GLC). Following her political career, she chaired the Heath and Old Hampstead Society from 1967 to 1989 and was its president from 1993 to 2004.

She was the daughter of James Clerk Maxwell Garnett, a barrister, and Margaret Lucy Poulton, the daughter of Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton. Her family resided in Gainsborough Gardens, Hampstead. She received her education at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, where she befriended Shiela Grant Duff. She studied economics at Somerville College, Oxford, from 1931 to 1933.

In 1933, Margaret Garnett married Douglas Jay, a politician who had tutored her in preparation for her entrance exams to Oxford. She was only 20 years old at the time of her marriage. She joined the Labour Party and, in 1934, was recruited by Herbert Morrison as a candidate for the London County Council. She was elected as the youngest member of the LCC in a 1938 by-election in Hackney South, shortly before Labour gained control of the council.

Throughout her political career, Jay represented various constituencies, including Hackney South, Battersea South, and Battersea North. She served on the LCC and later on the GLC until 1967, when she lost her seat. She remained active in local affairs, particularly in conservation efforts in Hampstead, and was recognized as a significant figure in the area.

She was a member of the Royal Commission on Population from 1944 to 1949 and had connections with Eva Hubback through this work. In January 1977, historian Brian Harrison interviewed Jay as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, focusing on the suffragette and suffragist movements.

In 1981, Jay left the Labour Party to join the newly formed Social Democratic Party (SDP). She rejoined Labour in 2007 after Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. She was considered one of the last surviving prominent women of the Hampstead Labour movement of her era, often described as one of the "Hampstead middle-class Labour grandes dames" groomed by Morrison.

Her family included her marriage to Douglas Jay, with whom she had four children. Her son, Peter Jay, was a journalist, economist, and former British Ambassador to the United States; he was married to Margaret Callaghan, daughter of Prime Minister Jim Callaghan. Her twin daughters, Helen and Catherine, gained public profiles in the 1960s. Peter Jay's former brother-in-law was Rupert Pennant-Rea, a former deputy Governor of the Bank of England.

Her niece, Virginia Bottomley, is a Conservative politician. Her nephew, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, and her great-nephew, Tristram Hunt, who served as Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central and was the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, are also noted family members.

Her papers are archived at the Churchill Archives Centre.