The otherwise “ordinary” life of Helen Newlove, Lady Newlove, who has died after a short illness aged 63, was turned into something first of all extraordinary and then remarkable by the savage, unprovoked murder of her husband outside their family home on what had been a quiet summer’s evening in 2007. It propelled the one-time legal secretary on to a public platform and into a passionate, unending campaign to improve community life, confront antisocial behaviour and provide proper help and support to the victims of crime.
Within three years she was a member of the House of Lords and two years after that she was appointed victims’ commissioner, a post she held until 2019 and to which she was reappointed in 2023. She later told Desert Island Discs that she felt “like Hilda Ogden” from Coronation Street when she first arrived at Westminster and wanted to tell fellow peers: “I’m Helen from the north and I live in a council house.”
She had previously been a shy person, but her courage and articulacy in pursuit of a positive public outcome to her own personal tragedy brought widespread admiration and gave meaning and momentum to her campaign. “Women are like teabags,” she would say. “You never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.”
On appointment as victims’ commissioner in 2012, she successfully badgered the then prime minister, David Cameron, for the post to be properly staffed and financed. She travelled across the UK, working with authorities to produce plans for improved community relations, and was determined that her reports should provide a programme for action, not collect dust on office shelves.
One significant consequence of her campaigns was the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024. Although she unsuccessfully opposed the inclusion of provisions for prisoners in the same legislation, the new law provides help and safeguards for crime victims. She was an active participant in the Lords on youth unemployment, civic engagement and justice, took her cause abroad, addressing the United Nations on one occasion, and in 2013 published a memoir, It Could Happen to You.
Helen was born in Salford, the second daughter of Terry Marston, who worked in motor parts sales and his wife, Rose, who was a cook and housekeeper. Helen was born with a hole in her lungs and as a two-year-old spent time in an oxygen tent. She was a studious child at St Patrick’s high school, Eccles, with aspirations to become an artist and animator. However, after leaving school at 16, and working in a chip shop, she did a secretarial course at St Helens College then became a copy typist at Manchester magistrates court and a committal court assistant.
She married Garry Newlove, a central heating engineer who became a salesman with a plastics company, in 1986, four years after they met, and subsequently set up home in Fearnhead, Warrington, near her parents. Garry was successfully treated for an aggressive form of stomach cancer and after their three daughters were born, Helen returned to work as a legal secretary.
The violent tragedy that shattered her life as “just an ordinary woman” – as she repeatedly described herself – occurred when a group of about 10 youths, fuelled by drugs and alcohol, attacked her car outside their home and her husband ran out barefooted to confront them. He was violently assaulted, kicked in the head “like a football” in front of their children, who tried to resuscitate him, and suffered a brain haemorrhage from which he died 36 hours later. After a 10-week trial, three teenagers were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum duration of 17, 15 and 12 years respectively.
It was the day following the trial when Helen Newlove, speaking at a police press conference and struggling with her new status as a widow, delivered a powerfully eloquent condemnation of the circumstances that gave rise to her husband’s death and the need for parents to be accountable and responsible for their children. She touched the nerve of the watching nation, provoked an enormous public response, and nine months later launched an organisation, Newlove Warrington, aimed at helping the local community overcome some of its problems. She also highlighted the lack of public consideration shown to victims.
The post of victims’ commissioner was created in 2010 and Newlove was the second person appointed to the post. She served two full terms under the Ministry of Justice until 2019, when she was succeeded by Dame Vera Baird. Baird stood down and Newlove was reappointed in 2023 for a term that would have concluded at the end of this year. She was a Conservative peer but insisted that her post was not about politics but about delivering action. Her fervour for change was undiminished. “We have got a long way to go,” she said.
Newlove was appointed pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Bolton in 2019. She was deputy chair of committees in the Lords from 2017 and had been a deputy speaker of the Lords since 2018. She chose a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace to take to her desert island, with lipstick as her luxury item.
She is survived by her second husband, Paul Shacklady, an administrator, whom she married in 2012, and the daughters of her marriage to Garry, Zoe, Danielle and Amy.
• Helen Margaret Newlove, Lady Newlove, victims’ commissioner and campaigner, born 28 December 1961; died 11 November 2025
