A FULL-TIME organiser of the Communist Party of Great Britain in Leeds has died at the age of 93.

Joyce McCarthy was an internationalist who made visits to the Soviet Union and socialist countries during the so-called cold war.

With her education interrupted by the second world war she left school in 1944 aged 14 and trained as a shorthand typist. 

Later as a mature student she gained a degree in politics with history at York University and later a masters degree in Victorian studies at Leeds Trinity and All Saints College.

She was a full-time Communist Party organiser in Leeds in the 1960s and was organiser of annual Daily Worker/Morning Star bazaar in the city at a time when it was a huge event. She also stood as a Communist Party candidate for Leeds City Council.

Her husband was Jim McCarthy, a boilerman, and they travelled abroad extensively. They became involved in running Yorkshire Tours which was dedicated to organising affordable trips to socialist countries for working-class people. Jim McCarthy died in 1996.

They had a son Jim and daughter Janice, who they took with them on some trips abroad.

Their children were members of Leeds Woodcraft Folk, the socialist alternative to Scouting and Guiding.

Daughter Janice Johnson recalled: “Most weekends the Woodcrafters went hiking or camping, often at the farm of Les and Mary Allinson outside the village of Booth, near Halifax. 

“Jim and Joyce sometimes joined the camps, too. No-one had transport. Everything that was used on those camps was carried on our backs and we all travelled by public transport.

“In 1970 Jim and Joyce travelled with Yorkshire Tours overland to Russia.

“It was a massive adventure. There weren’t the facilities en route that we now all take for granted and they used a Primus stove on the roadside to boil water for their much-needed mugs of tea.

“I joined them on a Yorkshire Tours overland journey to Algeria in 1976. Back then the boundaries seemed a bit different to nowadays and we had to go through a number of border crossings — Spanish Morocco, French Morocco. Algeria was like another world and we all found the Algerian people to be the kindest, nicest people we had ever met.

“Jim and Joyce both loved travelling to East Germany, particularly Jena, and they both attended evening classes to study German. They won a scholarship to attend a summer school at Vienna University.”

Joyce McCarthy enjoyed singing.

Daughter Janice said: “During her last years I played some of her favourite songs and we had a singalong. The last song we sang together was The Internationale. We la-la’d until the chorus when Joyce looked straight at me and sang ‘Then comrades come rally and the last fight let us face. The Internationale unites the human race.’ What a song to be our last song together!”

The family will be holding a private funeral in line with Joyce’s wishes.