Gwyneth Dunwoody

Apr 21 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

IMAGINE she was a stranger and you had been invited onto a panel to discuss political topics. Then you saw her sitting there.

It was a face to shrink opponents and hearten allies – a bulldog waiting for a bone to crunch.

You just had to hope you weren’t the bone, the grisly consequences of which were suffered by many foolish enough to cross the magnificent Gwyneth Dunwoody, our longest- serving female MP.

Those stalwart qualities were mixed with a true compassion for the underdog and a blazing hatred of injustice. So she became one of the finest constituency MPs this country has known, serving Crewe between 1974 and 1983, and Crewe and Nantwich from 1983 until her death.

To voters, she was what an MP should be, a champion of the people – not a dummy tailored by marketing executives and fed innocuous lines to be sung from the “same hymn book” as everyone else. This was noted by journalists and she was often quoted in serious newspapers and heard on shows such as Any Questions and Question Time.

She was brought up in a staunchly Socialist atmosphere in Fulham, the daughter of Morgan Phillips, general secretary of the Labour Party, and Norah Lusher, who became Baroness Phillips, the first female government whip in the House of Lords. Both her grandmothers had been suffragettes.

After an education at Fulham County Secondary School and the Convent of Notre Dame, she joined the Labour Party in 1946.

She was a councillor in Tot- nes, Devon, before becoming the MP for Exeter in 1966, holding the seat until 1970. In 1955, she married Dr John Elliott Orr Dunwoody, with whom she had three children.

Although a Euro-sceptic, she served on the European Parliament between 1975 and 1979, developing her great expertise in transport.

However, films were probably her greatest interest outside politics. From 1970 to 1975, she was director of the Film Producers’ Association of Great Britain and consultant to the Association of Independent Cinemas.

Her rather forbidding manner was something of a front, and Mrs Dunwoody was a kind and loyal friend. In 1998, she “detected sadness” on the faces of the original Winnie the Pooh dolls in the Donnell Library Centre and tried to persuade Rudolph Giuliani, Mayor of New York, to return them to London.

Gwyneth Dunwoody, politician; born December 12, 1930, died April 17, 2008.