My wife, Rita Austin, who has died aged 82, was the first Asian woman to stand for the Labour party in St Albans, Hertfordshire, in 1983. Later, she founded the Welsh Refugee Council.
Rita attended Loreto House in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Loreto Convent in Darjeeling, before arriving in England, in 1955, where she continued her secondary education at Loreto college in St Albans. She then studied for a year (1960-61) at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. During this time, Rita and I met, at Fircroft College, Birmingham, where I was studying economics, politics and English. We were married in 1962 and had two children.
