IT WOULD be easy to praise Ivy for her work as a member of the Communist Party just by acknowledging the importance of her partnership with Ted Poole. Too easy.

Ivy’s influence and actions were a significant part of the backbone of Swindon communists. A backbone remains largely unseen, but you know it’s there because it is the most crucial structure upon which everything else relies. Such a structure was Ivy.

Ivy was always first to undertake a task that needed doing. Sometimes small tasks, often large ones. All of them requiring commitment. That commitment was a reflection of her loyalty to the Communist Party, the labour movement more generally and of course, the struggle for peace.

Ivy was no intellectual Marxist theoretician. She didn’t spend her spare time reading volumes of 19th-century German philosophy in order to grasp the principles of capitalism, socialism and exploitation. Her understanding of such stuff came from within her.

She quite naturally railed against the exploitation of others, the inequalities created by class and the immense threats to peace in the world that not only exist but belligerently raise themselves over and over again. She naturally understood the need for solidarity, the rights of working people and the need for trade unions.

Ivy’s empathy for others was boundless. She would often be the first to propose a course of action designed to help those in need, or support a worthy campaign that addressed social injustice.

Her thoughts were not confined to these shores; she was an internationalist so the causes and campaigns throughout the world were in Ivy’s sphere of concern and therefore action.

But Ivy did not suffer fools gladly. In 1984 on a Friday in Swindon when collecting for the miners and their families of Aberdare, a man approached us clearly demonstrating his need to confront.

He began a speech which many, even now, could probably repeat without even hearing the man. It was cliched, hostile to the miners and every trade union, very clear that the Sun and the Daily Mail were completely correct and that Arthur Scargill was the evillest man in Britain.

Ivy was priceless, it was she who stood and faced the man and listened silently but attentively to his nonsense. When he appeared to have finished, Ivy asked, “Have you finished?” He said he had. The first thing Ivy did was to put a copy of the Morning Star into his hand. “I know you like reading newspapers,” she said, “That’s probably the best one you will ever read. They always refer to it last on Newsnight.”

Her tone implied that its position in the review of newspapers made it the most important. The man was suitably impressed. She then went on to explain, as only Ivy could, that we were collecting for the miners and their families. Children were going hungry and families had no money for anything. She talked of collective responses to difficult situations and even managed to invoke “the spirit of the Blitz!”

It was a masterful display. The man remained silent and listened to every word. He made no donation but he walked away with a copy of the Morning Star and a lot to think about. Ivy did that.

We will always remember Ivy and we will always miss her. Hasta la victoria siempre Ivy.

Swindon and Wiltshire branch of the Communist Party of Britain.