My sister, Min Birdsey, who has died aged 73 from cancer, was a Labour party press officer during the 1970s. She took up the role in 1973 and was part of the team that helped Labour win the February 1974 general election, becoming well respected and trusted by politicians and press alike, thanks to her competent, confident and straightforward manner.
As a press officer Min worked on some high profile byelections for Labour, including the one in West Bromwich in 1973 that brought the future Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, into the House of Commons, and another in Great Grimsby in 1977 when Austin Mitchell was elected after the death of Anthony Crosland. She also wrote a number of party political broadcasts and contributed the text for a book, Pictorial History of the Labour Party, 1900-75, published in 1975.
Min had a wonderfully deadpan sense of humour, and at Transport House was a member of the staff comedy club. She once appeared with the future foreign secretary Margaret Beckett in a musical, The End of the Peers Show, in which they performed as “singing harlots”. One of their lines was: “On Saturday for sixpence, I’ll drop all my commitments.”
Araminta – Min for short – was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, the second of four children of Donald Birdsey, an editor of various local newspapers, and his wife, Joan (nee Rice). She was a pupil at Luton High school before reading history and politics at Warwick University, where one of her lecturers was Germaine Greer.
Having inherited a love of newspapers from our father, she joined the Hitchin & District Pictorial as soon as she left university. A supporter of Hitchin Town football club, she was proud to be one of the first female football reporters on her beat, although she had to write under the byline AJ Birdsey to appease male sensitivities of the time. Her colleagues there included David Walker (who was later executive editor of the Financial Times) and his wife, Pat.
After moving to become a Labour press officer, Min stayed with the party in that role for several years until later working in the press offices of the BBC World Service, the London borough of Barking and Dagenham, and then the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, retiring when the AMA was wound up in 1997. In her spare time she taught English to Asian women and was elected as a Labour councillor for Hammersmith and Fulham in 1998. She stood down in 2005 when she returned to live in Hitchin.
Min requested that her ashes be scattered at Top Field, the home ground of Hitchin Town. She is survived by her elder brother, Kit, her two younger sisters, Rowena and me, three nephews, three great nephews, one great niece, and one great-great niece.
