Gwyneth Dunwoody was born in Fulham in 1930, long before the area became fashionable. Her family has always been political - both of her grandmothers were suffragettes, her father, Morgan Phillips became the General Secretary of the Labour Party, and her mother served as a minister in the House of Lords before being made the Lord Lieutenant of London. She is the mother of a daughter and two sons, and has ten grandchildren.

Gwyneth joined the Labour party in 1946, and has always been a loyal and very active member. Before, she was a Town Councillor in Totnes, stood for Exeter in 1964 and won the seat in 1966. Between 1967 and 1970, she was a minister on the Board of Trade. She lost her seat in 1970 and spent the next four years as Director of the Film Production Association of Great Britain. She won her current seat (Crewe, now Crewe and Nantwich) in 1974. She was a member of the European Parliament from 1974-8.

Gwyneth served on Labour's National Executive Committee during the traumatic 1980s, and has, at various times, been a front bench Opposition Spokesman on Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the NHS and Transport. She is a former chair of the Labour Party Communications Committee.

Currently, Gwyneth is the Chair of the Transport Sub-Committee of the Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs.

Gwyneth has a wide variety of interests. She is Life President of the Labour Friends of Israel, and Vice President of Socialist International Women. When time permits she enjoys opera and theatre. She also has a collection of teddy bears and, in January 1998, attempted, unsuccessfully, to secure the return of Winnie the Pooh and his fellow stuffed toys from their display case in the New York Public Library.