Gwyneth Dunwoody

Gwyneth Patricia Dunwoody (née Phillips; 12 December 1930 – 17 April 2008) was a British Labour Party politician, who was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Exeter from 1966 to 1970, and then for Crewe (later Crewe and Nantwich) from February 1974 to her death in 2008. She was a moderate socialist and had a reputation as a fiercely independent parliamentarian, described as "intelligent, obstinate, opinionated and hard-working". Early and private life Dunwoody was born in Fulham, London, where her father was Labour parliamentary agent. She belonged to an experienced political dynasty: her father, Welsh-born Morgan Phillips, was a former coalminer who served as General Secretary of the Labour Party between 1944 and 1962; her mother, Norah Phillips was a former member of London County Council who became a life peer in 1964 (allowing Dunwoody to be styled "The Honourable"), serving as a government whip in the House of Lords, and as Lord Lieutenant of Greater London from 1978 to 1986. Both of her grandmothers were suffragettes, and all four grandparents were Labour party loyalists. She attended the Fulham County Secondary School for Girls, now the Fulham Cross Girls' School, and the Notre Dame Convent (a girls' grammar school) in Battersea. She left school aged 16, and became a journalist with a local newspaper in Fulham, covering births, marriages and deaths. She joined the Labour Party in 1947, and spoke at the 1948 Labour party conference in Scarborough. She worked as an actress in repertory and as a journalist in the Netherlands, learning fluent Dutch, before suffering a bout of tuberculosis. Married life She married John Dunwoody in 1954, the same year he qualified as a doctor. Her husband became a general practitioner based in Totnes in Devon. They had two sons and a daughter. Their daughter, Tamsin Dunwoody, was a member of the National Assembly for Wales for one term between 2003 and 2007 and from 2005 was Deputy Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks in the Welsh Assembly Government.