Vera Thompson, who served as Roehampton Councilor for twenty years from 1978 to 1998, has died.

Living in Fontley Way until she had to go into Kingston Hospital due to illness, she passed away on Tuesday 26th July 2005.

Vera Thompson's life was marred by personal tragedy. She was orphaned when she was about five. She believed that her parents were killed in a car crash, but does not know and was brought up in a convent. It was not then an easy childhood. Vera was fostered out to a woman who beat her and whipped her. She was, in the language of the thirties, "put into service" and only later was saved by "the good old LCC", where she got an office job.

She had three children, a daughter who was still born, a son who had downs syndrome and was a haemophiliac and died as a result and another son who was killed on the A3. In addition her husband was found dead in suspicious circumstances - it is thought that he was mugged in a pub car park in Roehampton - the year before she got on the Council - 1978.

She thought that she would probably have voted Tory in her first election, but only because she had never thought about it. Then she met her husband to be, who was an active trade unionist. She was to be active in the Labour movement ever afterwards, first as a trade unionist and later as a Labour Party member.

After starting work at the LCC, Vera worked at Surrey County Hall in Kingston, where she was very active in NALGO. Vera held many TU posts, but the most important was probably as a member of the National Committee on Equal Opportunities for NALGO. She was also Chair of Wandsworth Co-op for years.

Vera had her militant moments. As a member of the Wandsworth Tenants' Joint Action Committee she once led a storming of the Council Chamber over the Tory Housing Rents Act, but in 1978 she decided to join the Council ranks as a Councilor for Roehampton, a ward she continued to represent until 1998.

As a long time Council tenant Vera was, not surprisingly, a long standing member of the Housing Committee and near permanent member of the various Council/tenant forums covering the Putney and Roehampton areas. As an active trade unionist she was also a member of the various staffing committees of the Council, such as Establishments and Teaching Staff Committees.

After coming off the council in 1998, Vera remained active in the various senior citizens' groups in the Borough such as the Putney & Roehampton Organisation of Pensioners (PROP) and the Wandsworth Pensioners' Forum, but recently she was troubled by worsening eye-sight.

Vera was an old school, member of the Labour Party, from a distinctively working class, deprived background, an active trade unionist and a committed co-operator, a tenant leader comfortable with her fellow constituents on Roehampton's estates. Vera is well described by the epithet "salt of the earth". Hugh Jenkins book, Rank and File has a chapter on Vera Thompson and much of the other detail in the above comes from her fellow former Roehampton Councilor John Slater.