Red Flag flying – Campaigner Ellen Luby honoured

Published: 16 September, 2010
by DAN CARRIER

THE full council meeting on Monday night may have seemed a little more subdued than normal – and for a good reason.

It was the first meeting for all councillors since the death of Socialist campaigner, Ellen Luby, who spent a lifetime observing the goings-on at the Town Hall from the public gallery – and she was never afraid to give councillors a piece of her mind.

To honour the memory of Mrs Luby, her family and councillors gathered on the roof of the Town Hall in Judd Street, King’s Cross, to witness a ceremony that the campaigner would have loved to have seen – the raising of the Red Flag over the building.

It was organised by Mayor Jonathan Simpson in honour of one of the borough’s most tireless political workers; someone whose involvement stretched back to the St Pancras rent strikes of the late 50s. Despite her berating of politicians of every hue – including disrupting Cllr Simpson’s own mayor-making ceremony just weeks before her death – he said: “I always found her very kind and good-humoured. She simply wanted the best for the people of Camden. She was so passionate about the borough, and when we spoke privately, she was lovely to me.”

Ellen’s granddaughter Selin Taylor said: “She would have been quite proud of her achievements being marked, but Ellen was not about how she was seen by others. How­ever, I think secretly a little tear would have come to her eye.”