Margaret, or Margie as she was invariably called, was Welsh through and through. Her maternal grandfather, David Lloyd George, had been a Liberal Prime Minister of the UK and Margie was also a Liberal. From an early age she mixed with the political class, and took her first steps as a child in 10 Downing Street. She recalled meeting Winston Churchill and Philip Snowden, the first Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, when she was quite young.
She first heard of the Oxford Group in Canada in 1938, and ‘kept bumping into it’. But it wasn’t until 1942 that she made a decision to give her life to God for him to direct. The first immediate result was that she decided to take on organizing the Girl Training Corps for Wales, which she had previously been resisting. This involved setting up groups of 14-18-year-old girls all over the Principality to enable them to play their part in the war effort. It was a great test of her faith as she had very little training, but she learned that God could show her what to do.
Many of the girls were from mining families. And many of the Welsh coalminers had suffered greatly through the Great Depression. She got to know many of the miners and their families, several of whom had become part of MRA, and found herself leading a delegation of miners to the first Caux conference in 1946. One of the delegation was a convinced Communist but he found a new approach after witnessing a change in his manager at the mine. He even wrote a spiritual verse.
Margie married Mike in Criccieth in 1948. Frank Buchman announced that he was coming to the wedding with the 150-strong cast of a musical called ‘The Good Road’, so Margie’s organising skills were needed yet again.
Together, Mike and Margie worked with MRA in many countries, including Thailand, Greece, Zimbabwe and the USA. More of their story can be found elsewhere on this website.
