My mother, Margaret Cross, known as Magda, who has died aged 99, was a committed teacher, peace campaigner and Quaker, who for decades devoted much of her energy to the pursuit of social justice and disarmament.
Magda trained as a primary school teacher at Whitelands College (now part of the University of Roehampton), taking up her first teaching post, at Tudor Road school in Southall, west London, in 1944. Wartime conditions meant balancing the lure of dances at the Hammersmith Palais against the need to honour the night-time fire-watch rota at the school.
