Margaret Josephine McDonagh, Baroness McDonagh is a British Labour Party politician and was General Secretary of the Labour Party from 1998 to 2001. She now works as a management consultant. McDonagh was part of the New Labour leadership inner-circle for the 1997 general election campaign and was involved with delivering Labour victories in key target seats. She played an active role in the day-to-day running of the party's campaign and was one of the inner-core deciding the official party position on specific issues. In 1998, McDonagh became Labour's first female general secretary, after serving as deputy general secretary the previous year. She was not always popular with the grassroots and parts of the Parliamentary Party due to her perceived 'control-freakery'. She was considered to have badly mishandled the party's controversial London mayoral candidate selection process, which resulted in Ken Livingstone winning the election as an independent candidate, leaving the official Labour candidate Frank Dobson in third place, with subsequent disaffection amonsget the party membership. McDonagh later apologised for the mayoral electoral loss. 

June 26th, 1961 in (Age 63)