Laurie Green
Putney crusader Laurie Green, who has died - aged 84 - after a short battle with cancer, was a colourful and passionate advocate of any cause he championed.
Until just recently, Laurie lived in Hotham Road in the heart of Putney - you could not miss his house because it was the one with posters, press cuttings and stickers plastered across the windows. And when they weren't in his windows, they were being posted to local representatives and fellow campaigners.
Laurie, who was a Communist usually left without a Communist candidate to vote for in Putney, helped found and maintain the Putney & Roehampton Organisation of Pensioners (PROP) alongside Labour Party stalwart Dora Holmes and others.
Above all others the cause he championed was better rights for pensioners - our last exchange of correspondence was over the number of pensioners living in poverty despite the million who have been lifted out of it in the past decade by Labour. Of course, Laurie was right that more needs to be done, and my push for the government to go further on both fuel poverty and the cost of food was, in part, influenced by Laurie's effective lobbying.
Laurie didn't just confine his letter-writing to elected representatives: he was a frequent correspondent to the local and national press, the Wandsworth Borough News regularly carrying his views on wrongs he was seeking to right.
Laurie recently moved from Hotham Road to The Pines nursing home in West Hill, though his stay there was to be short. He passed following treatment at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital which in many ways is fitting for this was the hospital that Laurie often mentioned as caring so wonderfully for his wife, Jean.
His family provided a quote in the recent edition of the Wandsworth Guardian that sums Laurie's values up perfectly:
"The meaning of life is not a fact to be discussed, but a choice that you make about the way you live your life."
Until just recently, Laurie lived in Hotham Road in the heart of Putney - you could not miss his house because it was the one with posters, press cuttings and stickers plastered across the windows. And when they weren't in his windows, they were being posted to local representatives and fellow campaigners.
Laurie, who was a Communist usually left without a Communist candidate to vote for in Putney, helped found and maintain the Putney & Roehampton Organisation of Pensioners (PROP) alongside Labour Party stalwart Dora Holmes and others.
Above all others the cause he championed was better rights for pensioners - our last exchange of correspondence was over the number of pensioners living in poverty despite the million who have been lifted out of it in the past decade by Labour. Of course, Laurie was right that more needs to be done, and my push for the government to go further on both fuel poverty and the cost of food was, in part, influenced by Laurie's effective lobbying.
Laurie didn't just confine his letter-writing to elected representatives: he was a frequent correspondent to the local and national press, the Wandsworth Borough News regularly carrying his views on wrongs he was seeking to right.
Laurie recently moved from Hotham Road to The Pines nursing home in West Hill, though his stay there was to be short. He passed following treatment at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital which in many ways is fitting for this was the hospital that Laurie often mentioned as caring so wonderfully for his wife, Jean.
His family provided a quote in the recent edition of the Wandsworth Guardian that sums Laurie's values up perfectly:
"The meaning of life is not a fact to be discussed, but a choice that you make about the way you live your life."
posted by Stuart King at
16:13
<< Home