Change language
Actions
Displays
Remove from selection
Add to selection
Abstract

Angela Sinclair-Loutit was not one to give up easily. A tireless defender of peace and social justice, she lay down in the Mall for an hour as part of a demonstration against the arms trade at the age of 84.

At another demonstration, against an arms fair in Canary Wharf where police were removing protesters, she told a friend: “I heard somewhere that you weigh more when you go limp, so when police dragged me away, that’s what I did.”

Eight years later, aged 92, she joined campaigners at the Whittington Hospital to protest against cuts to services.

She fought to preserve the NHS and was one of the original team who helped save the land at Gillespie Park, a popular nature reserve.

Coming from a military family, but describing herself as an “aggressive pacifist”, she travelled widely throughout her life. She died last Thursday, aged 95, while on holiday in France visiting her son, and surrounded by much of her family.

Characterised by a formidable appetite for social justice, incisive wit and lucidity to the end, she will be missed by a great number of friends, colleagues and comrades.

Born in Kensington and raised in Hampshire, Angela had a twin brother and two older sisters.

She studied politics, philosophy and economics at Somerville College, Oxford, but, as a pacifist, wanted to do something more practical when the Second World War broke out.

She was tried by a coscientious objector tribunal, of which she said: “I was pleased to have a tribunal. It was rather like passing a driving test, being like all the others, having some status with the men.”

Abandoning her studies in 1940 she joined the Quaker Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU). She worked in air-raid shelters in the East End during the Blitz, helping families who had lost homes and loved ones during the bombing.

Angela then went to work at the FAU headquarters as a secretary before being sent to a camp in the Sahara desert for 6,000 Yugoslavs who had been evacuated from the Dalmatian Islands.

The young Angela ended up driving medical supplies from American ships 800 kilometres along the coast to Belgrade, doing her own maintenance on the truck. She later worked in the UN health division in Belgrade.

Angela met her husband in Egypt, a doctor named Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit who worked in the Middle East Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. He was a key figure in the early days of the pioneering Finsbury Health Centre, which Angela campaigned to save when it was under threat in 2008.

They married in 1946 and Angela worked for the British Red Cross Tracing Service, trying to reunite mostly Jewish families who had been split up by the war.

Her first son was born in 1951 in Bangkok, Thailand. The couple had moved there when Kenneth became the World Health Organisation adviser to UNICEF in the Far East.

Angela’s two other children were born in Paris where the family lived on a boat on the Seine. The family also spent time in Canada and Morrocco.

Back in London, when her children were of university age, Angela qualified as a social worker, helping with the housing, poverty and emotional problems of poor people in Tower Hamlets.

She separated from Kenneth in 1972 and moved to Islington in 1978, where she became involved in Islington Age UK, Islington Pensioners Forum (IPF), Islington Disabled Action, and Islington Hands off our Public Services.

She lived in Highbury Hill and is remembered by friends and comrades as a confident and able campaigner.

“She was able to boss you about while still being nice about it,” said George Durack, IPF chairman.

“We are justly proud of a magnificent campaigner and mother. It is a sad loss for the whole community.”

Angela became frail in her 90s, but still managed to stay active, walking a mile to Hyde Park during an anti-cuts rally in 2012.

Close friend Donatella Bernstein said: “In her 90s Angela was beset with frustration at progressive deafness, and difficulty with reading. She was bright and incisive to the end, up-to-date with world affairs and political developments. For each of us she had an ear, genuine interest in our lives, wry comments and a twinkle in her eye – and a glass of wine.”

Angela is survived by her children, David, Stephan and Jessica, and seven grandchildren.

JEREMY CORBYN: ‘I learned so much from her’


IN her long life Angela (above) was full of surprises. I first met her in the early 1980s as a local activist in seemingly every cause: a peace campaigner, a member of many different organisations, and always up to date on any and every local issue.

In her latter years, she was perhaps best known for being the secretary of Islington Pensioners Forum where she succeeded the founder Liz McKeon and brought to it the perception and energy of a strong social group as well as one that was effective in speaking up for the elderly of our borough.

She always was at the front of arguments to protect, and extend, adult social care and was the most determined and committed supporter of our Whittington Hospital. She always made the point that our NHS had to be not just free at the point of need, but available at the point of need.

During World War Two she was enlisted in a support role and once described to me how she was detailed to drive a huge crash gearbox truck from Cairo to Baghdad as part of the support role to troops in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Angela did this out of passion – just as much as she was concerned about health care, she campaigned in her life for a world of peace.

Locally, Angela loved the community in Highbury and was always part of the local scene in the Labour Party, the Highbury Community Association and Gillespie Park. She was there supporting the successful campaign to turn the disused sidings into the wonderful Park and Ecology Centre that it now is, and it was a pleasure to hold a 90th birthday event for her there.

Angela’s breadth of knowledge, and her experience of so many aspects of life meant people listened and respected her.

I learned much from her and was privileged to count her as a dear friend. In reality she was a friend to all who want peace and justice and to live in a caring community. Thank you, Angela.