My mother, June Clarkson, who has died aged 81, was a passionate campaigner, particularly for services for elderly people. Latterly she was an organiser for the Portsmouth Pensioners’ Association, serving as its secretary; she was also made an honorary member of the National Pensioners Convention.
June was born in Southampton, the eldest of Albert and Lilian Gillard’s six children. Her memories of her rural childhood in the Hampshire village of Swanmore stayed with her all her life and she contributed to several local histories. June attended Winchester County high school, where she developed a lifelong love of poetry and literature, while also embracing the social side of village life, youth clubs and dances.
In 1956, she married Maurice Clarkson, a teacher at what is now Swanmore primary school. They moved to Staffordshire and Cumbria and had three sons, but divorced in 1968.
June returned to Swanmore and decided to retrain as a teacher. She won a place at Kirkby Fields College of Education in Liverpool and went on to work as a teacher at inner-city schools in Birmingham. There she made a wide circle of friends and her interest in campaigning and politics intensified.
Her particular causes at this time were homelessness and women’s rights. She began volunteering at homeless centres and went on several protest marches. After she completed a politics degree at Birmingham Polytechnic (now Birmingham City University) in 1983, her involvement became more formal, and politics became an intrinsic part of her life. She joined the Labour party, organised support for the miners’ strike, buses to the Greenham Common women’s camp and other antiwar protests. In Birmingham and later in Portsmouth, where she settled in retirement, she served as a Labour constituency membership secretary, women’s officer, secretary and campaign organiser.
In Portsmouth she fought to maintain local bus services, improve pensions and, as part of the Save Ward G5 group, to reopen a ward for terminally ill patients at Queen Alexandra hospital, Cosham.
June is survived by her children, Christopher, Richard and me, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
