Margaret Eadie Benn, Viscountess Stansgate (née Holmes; 7 June 1897 – 21 October 1991) was a British theologian, the President of the Congregational Federation, and an advocate of women's rights.
[1] In her youth, in the 1920s, she was a member of the League of the Church Militant which was the predecessor of the Movement for the Ordination of Women and was rebuked by Randall Thomas Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for advocating the ordination of women.
Margaret started at St Columba's School, Kilmacolm in Renfrewshire but moved to St. Mary's College when it was in Lancaster Gate, London, before moving due to disagreements with the school's high church headmistress.
Margaret Benn became the Congregational Federation's first President, helping to shape its principle of 'unity within diversity'.
The couple had four sons; the eldest, Michael, died in 1944 in a wartime accident, the Labour politician Tony Benn (1925–2014), David (1928–2017), a Russia specialist long with the BBC,[3] and Jeremy, their last son, who was stillborn.