Lionel Murray, Baron Murray of Epping Forest, OBE, PC (2 August 1922 – 20 May 2004) was a British Labour Party politician and trade union leader.

Murray was born in Hadley, Shropshire, the son of a young unmarried woman, Lorna Hodskinson, and was brought up by a local nurse, Mary Jane Chilton.^[2] He attended Wellington Grammar School, read English at Queen Mary College, London, and then joined the British Army.^[3]

Murray started as a manager for a Liverpool catering firm. He was a Trades Union Congress (TUC) employee from 1947, when he joined as an assistant in the economics department. Seven years later he was promoted to head of the department. He was elected assistant general-secretary in 1969.

In 1970 he was invited to deliver the Marlow (Scotland) Lecture to the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland. He chose the subject Trade Unions and the State – 1964 to 1970 in Retrospect.^[6]

He became General Secretary of the TUC in 1973, leading it during the Winter of Discontent and the confrontations with Margaret Thatcher's government.

Murray married Heather Woolf, a nurse, in 1945. The couple had two daughters and two sons, the younger of whom, David, pursued a successful career in the Royal Air Force.^[7] They lived in Loughton, Essex.

Murray served as a TUC officer until his retirement in 1984, three years early. Upon his retirement in early May 1984, he made the following statement – "There are places to go, books to read, flowers to smell and trees to look at. I would like to walk through Epping Forest".^{[citation needed]}

He was active in Loughton Methodist Church. Murray died in hospital in 2004 from septicaemia and pneumonia.

Murray was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1966 New Year Honours.^[8]

Sworn of the Privy Council in 1976,^[9] he was created a life peer as Baron Murray of Epping Forest, of Telford in the County of Shropshire, on 14 February 1985.^[10] The Murray Hall in Loughton was named after him, and a blue plaque to him was unveiled on the family house, 29 The Crescent, in January 2019.