A lifelong activist in the Labour party, my wife, Pat Metcalfe, who has died of cancer aged 71, served as a Labour councillor on Lincolnshire county council from 1983 until 2001, and was the council’s chair of education from 1993 to 1997. She was a powerful advocate for early years provision and led the way in the building of several new nursery schools, and the improvement of council services for those with special educational needs. She also played a significant role with her Labour colleagues in establishing the University of Lincoln in the city.
Pat was a great champion of comprehensive education and the sternest of critics of the commodification of education and the advent of market principles in the schools system. She was also passionate about the need to address inequality and injustice and a real champion of equality for women. On the left of the Labour party, she retained her loyalty to the party through the difficult years of pragmatic compromise.
Pat was born in Dublin, daughter of Michael and Ita Murphy. They separated while she was still a baby, and Ita started a new life with her four daughters, Kathleen, Vicky, Theresa and Pat, in York, where she got a job as production supervisor at the Rowntree’s chocolate factory. Pat was educated at the Bar Convent school, York, then went to Harrogate Art College. She retained her artistic and creative talents later in life, and often made clothes for herself and our children in the early years of our marriage.
Pat and I met through the 60s peace movement, as rebellious teenagers with dreams of changing the world. She was the chair of York youth CND and I was the organiser of the North East Committee of 100 (the civil disobedience wing of the peace movement), based in an office in York. We were involved in the organisation of many of the civil disobedience demonstrations at that time, and so we did a lot of campaigning together, as well as an awful lot of dancing in the jazz clubs in York.
We married in 1963, when Pat was 18, and she devoted much of her early adult life to bringing up our children, Rachelle and Paul. We lived first in Birmingham, and then London, where I trained as a social worker and Pat’s voluntary work included a spell in the youth service in the East End. When we moved to Lincolnshire with dreams of “the good life” and self-sufficiency after a decade in the city, we quickly got involved in local politics. Pat was also a volunteer at and then, in the 1980s, a director of the Lincoln branch of Samaritans.
Warm, generous, loving and brave, she gave me unending support and took great joy in later years in the arrival of our grandsons, Daniel and Sean.
Pat is survived by me, our children and grandchildren, and her sisters, Kathleen and Vicky.
Ric Metcalfe
