Margaret McDonagh, Baroness McDonagh

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Margaret Josephine McDonagh, Baroness McDonagh is a British Labour Party politician and was General Secretary of the Labour Party from 1998 to 2001.

McDonagh's career had been as a Party Organiser. She did well due to organisational skill, good relations with the unions and a record of success. By 1987, she was a regional organiser for the London Labour Party.

McDonagh was part of the leadership inner-circle for the 1997 general election campaign and was charged with delivering Labour victories in key target seats and was a key contributor to the election landslide. She played an active role in the day-to-day running of the party's campaign and was one of the inner-core that decided for MPs what the official party "line" was on specific issues.

In 1998, she became Labour's first female general secretary after serving as deputy general secretary for the previous year. She had a difficult time, not always popular with the grassroots or all 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, and the subsequent fall-out and disaffected membership. Her organisational skills came to the fore however in the delivery of a second landslide victory at the 2001 general election.

After stepping down from the position of General Secretary after the 2001 general election, McDonagh entered business. She became General Manager of Express Newspapers until 2002 having studied a business course in the United States. She is now a company director.

McDonagh was given a life peerage in 2004, as Baroness McDonagh, of Mitcham and of Morden in the London Borough of Merton.

She is the sister of Siobhain McDonagh, Labour Member of Parliament for Mitcham and Morden.