Joan Lestor, Baroness Lestor of Eccles

Joan Lestor (13 November 1931 – 27 March 1998), known as Baroness Lestor of Eccles from 1997, was a Labour Party politician.

Born in Vancouver, Canada, she was the daughter of Charles Lestor, a journalist, actor, and Esther, a textile worker and union activist. The family moved to the United Kingdom when she was five years old.

Lestor trained as a teacher at Goldsmiths College and became a primary school teacher in Walthamstow. In 1955 she joined the Labour Party. In 1958 she was elected to Wandsworth Borough Council and in 1962 won a by-election to represent Wandsworth Central on the London County Council. She remained a member of the county council until its abolition in 1965, and continued as a member of Wandsworth Council until 1968.

She also entered parliamentary politics: having nearly won Lewisham West from the Conservative Party in 1964, she became MP for Eton and Slough in 1966. She held the seat untill 1983. In that year she was defeated by the Conservatives in the newly creatted constituency of Slough. She returned to parliament as MP for Eccles, Greater Manchester in 1987. In 1997 she was made a life peer, as Baroness Lestor of Eccles, of Tooting Bec in the London Borough of Wandsworth.

She died aged 66 at the Trinity Hospice, Clapham, from motor neurone disease.