Change language
Actions
Displays
Remove from selection
Add to selection
Abstract

Dorothea (Dorothy) Cheesmur Ellis, life-long campaigner and supporter of the Labour Party, who was one of the first people to to support Jeremy Corbyn’s 1983 election campaign, has died aged 75.

The wife of the historian and novelist Peter Berresford Ellis succumbed to a long fight with cancer on March 30. She and Peter have been residents of Archway since 1981.

She was born in Harrow in 1940 and on leaving school studied acting at the Theatre Workshop. Through her mother, who was Italian, she became familiar with Italy while growing up, and went to work in Rome where she taught English and even managed a small hotel. It was on a return to visit her parents that she was to meet Peter and they would have celebrated 50 years together this September.

Based in London but travelling widely in many countries, usually with Peter, she became a researcher into social and medical questions. She worked on housing surveys for central government and owned her own research company, before retiring.

Dorothy, who became Labour’s fundraising officer in Islington’s Hillrise ward for a period, was always an active campaigner. She stood on social principles and human rights issues. Always independent, she criticised policies within the party that she felt were wrong or misguided. From 2008 she took a stand against the proposal to sell Ashmount School for housing, leaving the area bereft of a school.

She cam­paigned to maintain it in local education. It was obvious to her, and local residents, that a school was needed for the community. She was a committee member of the Ashmount School Action Group from its inception and when its motives were misrepresented she resigned from the party.

“Communities do not consist merely of blocks of anonymous houses, they need social amenities as well – schools, community centres, places where people can gather and be involved as a community,” she said.

Dorothy was also active in campaigning for British withdrawal from Ireland, and supported the peace initiatives and peace process. Locally, she joined Jeremy Corbyn, Gareth Peirce and others in trying to stop the closure of the Irish Centre in St John’s Way, a social amenity providing advice, lunches for pensions and other facilities.

As well as activity in many local campaigns, she also raised money for concerns that were close to her heart, such as Fight for Sight, Diabetes UK and Cancer Research. Diagnosed herself with a particularly virulent cancer, it in no way slowed her activities until December.

Even in the weeks before her death, she was on the phone trying to raise funds and awareness for refugees, horrified by conditions in her beloved Italy, in Greece (she had been to Lesbos) and in Calais.

A week before her death, it was obvious she needed strong palliative care. She was taken into St Joseph’s Hospice, Mare Street, Hackney, with Peter constantly at her side until her death eight days later.

Tributes to her life and work have poured in from many people in the many areas in which she was active, including Jeremy Corbyn, who acknowledged her spirit and tenacity.

The funeral will take place at 1pm on Monday at the burial chapel of Islington Cemetery, with a humanist commemoration at the cemetery chapel, 278 High Road, East Finchley, followed by a reception at the Spaniard’s Inn pub close to Hampstead Heath.