The former Labour Party general secretary Margaret McDonagh, who has died aged 61 from brain cancer, was a formidable political strategist responsible for the tactics that won her party the landslide general election in 1997, sweeping Tony Blair and “New Labour” into office for a generation. A key figure in the modernisation of the party’s aims and values, four years later she helped to deliver a record second landslide victory.
She was a fierce, dedicated, single-minded woman whose political views had been formed by the impact of the devastating Labour party feuding of the late 1970s and early 80s, and the electoral rout it suffered in the 1983 general election. She was a rightwing pragmatist whose own background had taught her that winning support from working-class and lower middle-class voters meant that Labour had to identify with their concerns, specifically on issues such as crime and security.
When she was appointed general secretary in 1998, McDonagh was the youngest person – and the first woman – ever to hold the post.
She was not a popular choice. She demanded a lot from everybody and expected to get it. In doing so, she won minds, if not hearts, and also regard and respect for her determination. She listened to others, spoke her own mind and was always prepared to stand up for what she believed to be the right thing to do.
Shortly before retiring as general secretary after the 2001 election, having told the prime minister previously of her intention, she refused a request from Blair to sign off a £500,000 wage bill to increase salaries for political staff at Downing Street. At a time when the party organisation was in debt and she faced making redundancies from her own much more poorly paid staff, she thought the proposal inequitable and unfair, and the prime minister had to use the authority of the loyalist national executive to order her to comply.
McDonagh had been a successful fundraiser for the party, drawing on her strong relations with the trade union movement, where she had worked as a research officer for the Electricians’ union, the EETPU (now part of Unite), before joining the Labour party staff in 1987. She was criticised, however, for taking a donation of £100,000 from Richmond Desmond, then the owner of the Daily Express which was used on Labour advertisements in the Express newspapers in the 2001 election campaign.
Her critics included Labour MPs who objected on the grounds that the group published a number of soft porn magazines. McDonagh took a post as general manager of Express Newspapers in 2001, after an eight-week business course at Harvard University.
The other main controversy of her period as general secretary was the chaotic incompetence that characterised the party’s attempt to prevent Ken Livingstone standing as the official Labour candidate in the first mayoral elections in London in 2000. She took much of the political flak for the prime minister as a result of his ill-fated determination that this should not happen. A series of unsuccessful political manoeuvres resulted in Livingstone’s victory as an independent, with the Labour candidate, Frank Dobson, in third place behind the Conservative candidate. It was observed that Blair’s mistake had been to commit to establishing the post of a London mayor without first having identified the party’s candidate.
Margaret was the younger daughter of Breda (nee Doogue), a psychiatric nurse, and her husband, Cumin McDonagh, then a building labourer. She and her older sister, Siobhain, now the Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden, south London, were born in Mitcham and continued to live together in Colliers Wood throughout their adult lives. Their Irish family were staunch Labour supporters and Margaret joined the party at 17. The two sisters attended Holy Cross secondary school, New Malden, and Margaret then went on to gain a BSc in government at Brunel University, Uxbridge. She later received a master’s degree in advanced marketing at Kingston Business School.
Labour’s political difficulties at this time were brought home to Margaret when the then Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden, Bruce Douglas-Mann, joined the Social Democratic party and sought a renewed mandate from his constituents in a byelection in 1982. The seat was lost to the Tories’ Angela Rumbold, and the McDonagh sisters decided to campaign to win it back for Labour. In the 1983 general election, Margaret was the agent for the seat and in 1987 Siobhain first stood as the candidate. She won the seat at the third attempt, in 1997.
Margaret worked as the regional organiser for the National Association of Licensed House Managers before joining the EETPU. In 1987 she was appointed as the assistant regional officer for the London Labour party and joined the head office staff in 1994, when Blair was elected leader. In this role she worked on the policy to reform party objectives, including replacing Clause IV, and she was the key seat taskforce leader in the run-up to the triumphant 1997 election. She was election co-ordinator from October 1996 until the election and was briefly deputy general secretary before winning the top job.
After leaving Express Newspapers in 2002, McDonagh went on to work as a management consultant, becoming chair of iPublic in 2004, the year she was appointed to the House of Lords. She was also a director of the airport owner TBI (2004-14), Standard Life (2007-12) and the healthcare firm Care Capital (2008-10), and chaired Standard Life Charitable Trust (2009-12) and Smart Energy (2013-15). In order to assist women in business, in 2013 she founded and chaired The Pipeline.
She was diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2021, and is survived by Siobhain.
• Margaret Josephine McDonagh, Lady McDonagh, politician and management consultant, born 26 June 1961; died 24 June 2023
• This article was amended on 26 June 2023. A previous version said Margaret McDonagh was the first general secretary to have been promoted from within the Labour party headquarters staff. This was incorrect, and the reference has been removed.
