Joan Lestor

Joan Lestor, Baroness Lestor of Eccles (13 November, 1931 – 27 March, 1998) was a Labour politician.

Lestor was educated at Blaenavon Secondary School, Monmouth; William Morris High School, Walthamstow and the University of London. She became a nursery school teacher and a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, but resigned from the latter as a result of the Turner Controversy. She became a councillor in 1958 on the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth and later the London Borough of Wandsworth. She served on London County Council 1962-64.

Lestor contested Lewisham West in 1964 and was elected Member of Parliament for Eton and Slough in 1966.

Lestor was also one of the founding editors of anti-fascist monthly, Searchlight Magazine in the 1960s.

After boundary changes in 1983, Lestor contested the new constituency of Slough but was defeated by the Conservative candidate John Watts. She was later returned for Eccles in 1987, and held this seat until 1997.

On 4 June, 1997 she was created a life peer as Baroness Lestor of Eccles, of Tooting Bec in the London Borough of Wandsworth.

References

*Rayment