My mother, Brenda Procter, who has died aged 66 of cancer, was an activist and fighter for social justice who was first politicised during the 1984-85 miners’ strike. She then campaigned tirelessly to improve the lives of working people.
During the miners’ dispute, when her husband, Ken, was on strike, Brenda, with other miners’ wives, started the food parcel distribution centre at Florence Colliery Miners’ Welfare, Stoke-on-Trent, and formed a support group.
Brenda started to travel the country, to stand on picket lines and attend rallies and demonstrations, sharing platforms with Tony Benn, Arthur Scargill, Neil Kinnock and other prominent supporters of the striking miners. She was also part of the North Staffs Miners’ Wives Action Group, who sang at political rallies and functions across the country and abroad.
After the strike ended, Brenda became involved in other political struggles, such as the Wapping printers’ dispute and the Liverpool dockers’ strike. In 1993 she chained herself to the pithead at Trentham colliery when it was threatened with closure.
Born in Stoke-on-Trent, Brenda was the daughter of Florence (nee Hallam) and Thomas Hawkins. Her father was a miner and her mother a pottery worker, as were their parents before them.
Brenda attended Sandon high school in Meir, Stoke-on-Trent, leaving in 1965, and went to work at the Belstaff clothing factory in Longton. In 1970, she married Jan Zablocki, a telecoms engineer, and I was born in 1973. The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1975 she married Ken Procter, a coalminer. They had a daughter, Melanie, and Ken also raised me as his own.
A few years after the miners’ strike, Brenda was elected as a councillor for Hartshill ward in Stoke-on-Trent, which she served from 1988 to 1992. Having left school at 15 without qualifications, she went on to take a degree in industrial relations at Keele University, graduating in the mid-90s.
In recent years Brenda provided support and advice for people on benefits who had been sanctioned. At a screening of his latest film, I, Daniel Blake, at Trent Vale Jubilee Club in February, the director, Ken Loach, when told of Brenda’s illness, spoke fondly to friends of his memories of her campaigning.
Brenda and Ken divorced in 1991. Melanie died in 2012. Brenda is survived by her partner of 26 years, Phil Pender, by me, and by two grandchildren.
