Get up and galvanise!

Unite Community activist Maureen Lenehan-Ferguson springs up from the settee to illustrate her point.

 

“I won’t let them grind me down. I am 80 years old and I can touch my toes. So there you go,” Maureen says.

 

“My aim is to stay alive until we get another Labour government – because God help everyone if the Conservatives carry on like this. When I’m out, every single day of my life, I promote the Labour Party and the union.”

 

Maureen possesses the kind of energy and idealism you’d expect from someone in their twenties. Together with her husband Brian, 71, Maureen uses every opportunity to campaign against the austerity which is blighting her village of Trimdon Station, County Durham.

 

Whether organising food bank donations, campaigning outside hospitals or tirelessly recruiting new Unite Community members, the grandmother of four is dedicated to stemming Tory inflicted damage.

 

“The Conservatives want it that way because they want to go back to the Victorian times, where if you wanted a job you had to go cap in hand and say ‘please sir can I have a day’s work?’. I firmly believe that’s what they want. They don’t live in the real world.” Maureen said.

 

Maureen, however, has had a wealth of real world experience. She was born and raised in the local mining community. When she was seven years old her father took her to the polling station and instilled in her the importance of working people exercising their democratic rights.

 

While employed at the clothing manufacturer John Collier, she joined the Tailor and Garment Workers Union, staying on when it became Unite. Maureen has remained a member every since.

Seeing the hard-won progress of working people being eroded fills her with ire and concern for the future.

Rationing?  

Maureen cites the rise of unemployment, the increase in food bank usage and the closure of essential services in her own area and wonders where it’s going to lead. If left to their own devices, Maureen fears, the Conservatives might even implement rationing – something she lived through during the Second World War.

 

“The way this government is going it wouldn’t surprise me it all. It’ll be so bad that everybody will take to the streets,” she said.

 

Never a woman to sit on the sidelines Maureen uses every opportunity to galvanise the community; recruiting new Unite members, speaking out against social injustice and fighting back against a government “who want to abolish the unions.”

 

“My manifesto is: the young, the elderly and the vulnerable. I say it as it is, even if people don’t like me for it. In another time I would have been a suffragette. I’m not averse to chaining myself to railings,” Maureen explained.

 

“But it’s an everyday thing for me. That’s how you do it. In the paper shop, the dentist, the supermarket, everywhere. I’ll get half a dozen people gathered round and we’ll start talking about the state the country.

“That half a dozen will go away and speak to at least another half a dozen. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve recruited.”

 

 Photos by Mark Pinder