Doreen Massey, Lady Massey of Darwen, who has died of cancer aged 85, devoted a long and busy working life primarily to improving the lives of children and young people in Britain and, subsequently, as a member of the Council of Europe, further afield. She believed in an inclusive society and sought to challenge discrimination, to defend human rights and, whenever possible, to speak on behalf of those who did not themselves have a voice.
Massey was acclaimed for her considerable ethical contribution to a number of issues in public life, notably on education, marriage equality, LGBTQ+ rights, sexual health and the misuse of drugs and alcohol. She was a forthright, brave woman who lived life according to the values she espoused, and in consequence was as widely popular in parliaments as she had once been as a schoolteacher in the playground.
Her primary impetus was a belief in humanism, a philosophy she adopted in her late teens, having read EM Forster’s essay What I Believe. While she enjoyed a reputation for being unconventional and relished her ability sometimes to shock, her approach was tempered by humanist principles of tolerance and sympathy.
She was director of the Family Planning Association (FPA) for five years from 1989, having run its education programme for the previous two, and president of the Brook Advisory Centres, which offer help and advice to young people on sexual matters. She loved writing, and published a number of sex education manuals, including The Lovers’ Guide Encyclopedia (1996), of which she was the consultant editor and which was banned in a number of European countries. A book of short stories, Love on the Road, appeared in 2013, followed by a steamy novel, Love and Death in Shanghai (2018), under the pseudonym Elizabeth J Hall.
Doreen was born in Darwen, Lancashire, the daughter of a manual worker, Jack Hall, and his wife, Mary Ann (nee Sharrock). She was head girl at Darwen grammar school and was encouraged to go to university by one of her teachers. In 1961 she graduated from Birmingham University with a BA in French, adding a diploma in education the following year and an MA from the University of London in 1965. She was a leading member of the students’ union and won blues in hockey and cricket.
After a year’s graduate service overseas in Gabon, central Africa, from 1962, Massey taught at South Hackney school in east London for three years, and then in the US, at Springfield school in Philadelphia, for a further two. She worked for the Pre-School Playgroups Association (1973-77) and returned to teaching at Walsingham school, London, until 1983. She pursued her interest in personal, social and health education (PSHE) as an advisory teacher for the Inner London Health Authority (1983-85), and would later be credited with securing the inclusion of PSHE on the school curriculum. She managed the programme for young people on the Health Education Council (1985-87) before moving to the FPA.
Massey took her advocacy for young people – she once spoke of how much she enjoyed teaching “difficult” adolescent girls – on to the national and international stage after joining the House of Lords in 1999, but also continued with public work as chair of the National Treatment Agency for substance misuse (2002-12). A member of a range of parliamentary select committees on subjects covering her expertise, she became an effective, influential working peer. She chaired an inquiry in 2014 into the treatment of children by the police forces of England and Wales. Her report highlighting the lack of agreed practice and procedure was described as “an eye-opener”.
A member of the assembly of the Council of Europe from 2016, she was its rapporteur on adolescent health in Europe (2017-19) and in 2017, as chair of the assembly’s subcommittee on children, she organised a groundbreaking seminar on children’s mental health and child-friendly justice.
She was an active member of several all-party parliamentary groups (APPG) on issues dealing with children, young people and health and, as a member of the humanist APPG, advocated phasing out discriminatory religious schools and compulsory Christian worship in schools. Massey was a member of the APPG on cricket and was famed for having once bowled out the former England cricket captain Rachel Heyhoe Flint. She became a member of the Lady Taverners in 2004. She was a patron of Humanists UK and an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.
A fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Massey was awarded an honorary doctorate by Birmingham University and a fellowship by the University of Central Lancashire.
She is survived by her husband, Leslie Massey, a physicist, whom she married in 1966, and their children, Lizzie, Owen and Ben.
• Doreen Elizabeth Massey, Lady Massey of Darwen, teacher, education adviser and politician, born 5 September 1938; died 20 April 2024
