Perhaps no other individual has done more for the cause of older people in the UK and for raising awareness of the opportunities and challenges of growing longevity than Sally Greengross, Lady Greengross, who has died aged 86 of cancer. A life peer since 2000, who sat as a crossbencher, Greengross had in recent weeks stepped down as chief executive of the International Longevity Centre UK (ILC-UK), an influential thinktank she had established in 1997.
She wrote to the prime minister just two days before her death to ask for his support for a charity she had helped set up in 1993 as Action on Elder Abuse, now called Hourglass. “I am coming to the end of my life,” she said. “I am writing to you in the hope that you will help this important charity so that the work that I started all those years ago can be continued.”
Greengross will be best remembered, however, for her leadership of another charity, Age Concern England, now part of Age UK, which she grew exponentially by high-profile campaigning on issues from age discrimination to pensioner poverty, rigorous research and income generation that saw its trading arm become a multimillion-pound business.
She had joined Age Concern England in 1977 as assistant director, forging links with older people’s organisations across Europe that reflected her lifelong enthusiasm for European integration. She rose to become director – subsequently director general – in 1987 and held the role until 2000, while also serving as joint chair of the Age Concern Institute of Gerontology at King’s College London. She was vice-president of Age Concern England from 2002 to 2009, when it merged into Age UK.
Greengross had become increasingly interested in the implications of longevity for intergenerational fairness and launched ILC-UK as a member of the ILC Global Alliance, which now comprises 16 countries, while running Age Concern England.
She served as ILC-UK’s chair from 2000 to 2004, when she became its chief executive. Under her leadership, it produced authoritative analysis of the consequences of population ageing for government, public services and industry. But it also celebrated active long life: friends said Greengross would have been thrilled to see Sir Paul McCartney headlining the Glastonbury festival at 80.
Greengross herself maintained a tireless pace of activity into her 80s, taking full advantage of her platform in the Lords to promote ageing issues. She chaired four all-party parliamentary groups at various times and was vice-chair of the all-party group on ageing and older people from 2001 to 2010. Her numerous appointments included that of a founding commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission from 2006 to 2012, during which time she led an inquiry into abuse of human rights in home care for older and disabled people.
Always careful to practise what she preached about active ageing, she signed up with a personal trainer at 81.
Greengross was born in Hendon, north London, the only child of Estelle (nee Woolf) and Harry Rosengarten, a secular Jewish couple who both worked in the family clothing business. When the second world war broke out, and Sally was four, the family moved to Brighton. She enjoyed a free-spirited childhood, at one point being adopted as the mascot of Canadian troops stationed locally while they awaited the Normandy invasion.
She attended Brighton and Hove high school (now Brighton Girls) and developed an exceptional talent for languages. Allowed to sit her A-levels early, by 1953 she was living in Paris and taking classes at the Sorbonne, where she was steeped in the heady postwar culture and internationalism that, she later said, rendered her “madly pro-Europe”.
Returning to England, Greengross settled in London and supported herself through language tuition and translation but, in an unlikely departure, she also ran her own business importing radios. Advertising “French lessons” landed her in occasional scrapes, one of which led her to seek sanctuary with a nearby male friend who happened to be having a drink with Alan Greengross. They married in 1959.
Alan, who was knighted in 1986, ran a precision engineering business and was a lifelong Conservative activist, albeit firmly on the liberal, one-nation wing of the party, becoming the last opposition leader on the Greater London council and objecting to its abolition by Margaret Thatcher.
The Greengrosses had four children in less than four years. They describe a colourful and freewheeling upbringing in the sprawling family home in Notting Hill, west London, subject to few boundaries save for the abiding stricture of their mother – a committed humanist – that they should on no account become fundamentalist about anything.
Greengross was drawn into voluntary work with young offenders and became a magistrate. While the children were still young, she took a degree in sociology, politics and economics at the London School of Economics, graduating in 1972, and remained a researcher and occasional lecturer in European affairs before joining Age Concern England.
In later life, the Greengrosses supported various charitable causes including a project they initiated after the 2004 tsunami to help the recovery of a Sri Lankan fishing community. The family also funds a programme at the British Museum to widen its appeal to young people of all backgrounds.
Greengross was made OBE in 1993. She was the recipient of nine honorary degrees. She authored or edited a number of books and publications including the bestselling Living, Loving and Ageing: Sexual and Personal Relationships in Later Life (1989), co-written with her sister-in-law Wendy Greengross.
She had a brief first marriage, which she never discussed save for describing it as “disastrous”. Alan died in 2018. Greengross is survived by their children, Gail, Claire, Peter and Jo, and nine grandchildren.
• Sally Ralea Greengross, Lady Greengross, campaigner for older people, born 29 June 1935; died 23 June 2022
