Background
Daughter of John Percival Postgate and Edith Allen (see Postgate family), Margaret was educated at Roedean School and Girton College, Cambridge.
Alderman writer socialist politician
Daughter of John Percival Postgate and Edith Allen (see Postgate family), Margaret was educated at Roedean School and Girton College, Cambridge.
Upon successfully completing her course (Cambridge did not allow women to graduate formally until 1947), Margaret became a classics teacher at Saint Paul"s Girls" School. Her poem "The Falling Leaves", a response to the First World War, and currently on the Optical Character Recognition English Literature syllabus at GCSE, shows the influence of Latin poetry in its use of long and short syllables to create mimetic effects. During her subsequent campaign against conscription, she met G. Doctorate. H., whom she married in 1918.
The couple worked together for the Fabian Society before moving to Oxford in 1924 where they both taught and wrote.
She was an alderman on London County Council from 1952 until its abolition in 1965. Margaret"s brother Raymond was a labour historian, journalist and novelist.
During World War I, her brother Raymond Postgate sought exemption from military service as a socialist conscientious objector, but was denied recognition and jailed for refusing military orders. In the early 1930s, Margaret abandoned her pacifism in reaction to the suppression of socialist movements by the governments in Germany and Austria and to the events of the Spanish Civil War.
She was a member of the Inner London Education Authority from its creation in 1965 until her retirement from public life in 1967.