My husband, John Needham, who has died aged 84, was an active member of the Labour party, a highly regarded permanent secretary of the Open University Students’ Association (OUSA) and a lifelong Arsenal supporter.
He was brought up in a tenement flat near King’s Cross station in London. His parents, Lydia (nee Pateman) and John Needham, both worked at Whitbread’s Brewery. John was two when the second world war broke out and his father enlisted. He and his mother spent much of the war in underground shelters; their building was bombed twice.
