Peggy Jay

Who was Peggy Jay?

Margaret Christian "Peggy" Garnett Jay was an English Labour councillor.

As a young girl, Peggy Garnett attended St Paul's Girls' School in London, where she befriended Shiela Grant Duff. In 1931, she went up to Somerville College, Oxford, but she left two years later to marry Douglas Jay. She led a long political career with the British Labour Party and served as a London County Councillor, recruited by Herbert Morrison, representing Hackney then Battersea.

She was the last of the "Hampstead middle-class Labour grandes dames" whom Morrison groomed to take over the London County Council in 1934. She was elected to the new Greater London Council before losing her seat in 1967.