My father, Bernard Thurlow, who has died aged 83, was a teacher, a school counsellor and the founder of a charity for asylum seekers. He had an unstoppable passion for positive change, rooted in the Catholicism that he was brought up with and loved; for him, this translated into a hands-on commitment to social justice and lifelong socialism. He had the rare ability to get on warmly with everybody he met, even while suffering from dementia.
Bernard worked as a teacher in Manchester (1960-69), including at Our Lady’s Roman Catholic high school in Royton. He was then a school counsellor at Stanfield technical high school in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, and part of a central team of counsellors who worked across schools in Dudley, West Midlands (1970-85). From 1992 to 2003, he helped to find accommodation for ex-offenders within the probation service in north Staffordshire, as well as being a volunteer and a member of the national executive and social justice group for the St Vincent de Paul Society (SVP).
