Margaret Hunter

Hunter joined the CPGB's youth wing, the Young Communist League, in 1937 at the age of 14, before joining the CPGB in 1940. Not long after, while she was the T&G trade union's factory convener at Barr and Stroud, Hunter became secretary of the CPGB's Knightswood branch. She went on to become a full-time party secretary in Glasgow and ran in local elections in Dalmarnock in 1947 and 1949.^[1]

In 1958,^[1] Hunter become the party's Scottish organiser, part of the Scottish secretariat. She played a key role in organising the CPGB's 1958 celebrations to mark the bicentenary of Robert Burns' birth.^[2] When Helen Crawfurd Anderson died in 1954, Hunter made an oration at her funeral, at which she said the international socialist movement had lost "one of its finest representatives".^[3]

She ran for election to the UK Parliament in the Glasgow Gorbals constituency in 1964^[1] (1,339 votes; 5.6%) and 1966 (819 votes; 4.1%).

In 1963, she relocated from Glasgow to London^[1] to work as the party's national women's officer, which saw her continue to sit on the CPGB's Executive Committee, while also co-ordinating the work of the national Women's Advisory Committee (WAC).^[2]

Hunter became unwell while taking part in a political delegation to East Germany in the early 1970s, which led her to retire from political activism. She continued to live in London until her death in 1986.^[2]