My mother, Edna Woodhead, who has died aged 91 of cancer, was an adult education teacher, and a lifelong socialist and activist: as a school governor successfully campaigning to end corporal punishment in Doncaster schools; holding hands with women around the perimeter of Greenham Common; working tirelessly for Doncaster Labour party; supporting a range of humanitarian organisations and, during the miners’ strike, standing in solidarity with Women Against Pit Closures.
An only child, she was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, to Albert Partington, an accountant, and Lilly (nee Yellowley), a housewife. In 1940, to avoid the German bombing of the city, the family relocated to Workington on the edge of the Lake District. At the age of nine Edna was sent to a convent school in Berwick-upon-Tweed, where she lived in fear of the nuns; she had a traumatic memory of her golden plaits being cut off, to prevent the sin of vanity.
