Hackney has lost a campaigner with an indomitable spirit who motivated countless locals.
Hetty Bower, a political activist who inspired thousands with her fight against intolerance, war and social inequality, died at 108 years of age.
The Dalston native spent her life campaigning, joining the fledgling Labour Party when she was only 17 years old.
Her reply to Ed Miliband’s request for advice at an anti-austerity Labour fringe meeting was typically concise and loaded: “Two words. Social justice.”
The Labour leader called Ms Bower a “remarkable fighter for justice”.
Her pacifist beliefs stemmed from seeing injured World War One soldiers returning home when she was 13.
“I have spent most of my adult life working for peace on our planet. I don’t think human beings are civilised while we still waste time and money killing each other when we should be sitting at a table discussing how to improve the lives of ordinary people.”
Her last words as she lay in a hospital bed were “ban the bomb, for ever more”, echoing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Born into an East End Jewish family as Esther Rimel, she was influenced by her sister Cissie, who secretly attended suffragette meetings.
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Ms Bower joined the first union for women, the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, but was never a single-issue campaigner. She marched against the Blackshirts during the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 and ran an East Finchley hostel for Czech refugees during the Second World War.
She met her husband of 75 years, the late Reg Bower, through the Labour Party. Her love affair with Labour was tempestuous. Ms Bower left and rejoined the party many times until she revoked her membership over the Iraq War.
“She was one heck of a woman,” said Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington
