OBITUARY

Anne Mobbs

Anne at a meeting of the Alive and Kicking Group, in July 2019

Image: Peter Stalker

Posted - December 20, 2019

Born in Tottenham in 1937, Anne Wrightman was raised in a close, loving Jewish family as the youngest of five.

As a child, she experienced being uprooted from home through war, when she was evacuated to Cornwall during the Second World War.

Passionate about books, films and plays, Anne did a secretarial course that enabled her to work at Granada television, BBC World Service and to undertake a National Film Theatre film course.

Through the 1950s folk scene, with singers like Peggy and Pete Seeger and Ewan MacColl, Anne became drawn to socialism.

She met David Mobbs, a biochemist and socialist. Campaigning, like going on the first Aldermaston CND march together, played a big part in their love. They married in 1959.

Anne joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement. Her earliest memory - of what was to become a lifelong commitment - was handing out leaflets in 1960 from her baby son Keir’s pram, outside a London Underground station.

In 1960 they moved to Ibadan, Nigeria. David taught biochemistry and Anne worked at the Ibadan University Drama School.

Political refugees from other parts of Africa homed in on Ibadan, a vibrant anti colonial centre. Anne organised the Ibadan film and theatre festivals with Wole Soyinka and met the charismatic writer Ken Saro-Wiwa.

In 1995, she was to protest outside the Shell petrol station in Headington, Oxford, against his hanging, that day, by the Nigerian military regime.

After the birth of their daughter Ruth, the Mobbs, inspired by Kwame Nkrumah’s independent Ghana, travelled to Accra, Ghana, by ship in 1966.

On board they heard that Nkrumah was overthrown in a CIA backed, military coup. They continued to support African liberation struggles in Accra, despite the regime. In 1966 their daughter Amanda was born.

After moving to Zambia in 1968, Anne worked for the University of Lusaka and convened the ANC fund raising committee to fight apartheid, meeting Oliver Tambo.

After a bad car accident, Anne was hospitalised for three months and ANC freedom fighters visited her with huge bouquets.

David and Anne moved to Oxford in 1971, separating in 1973 when Anne went to Ruskin College (1973-75).

She became a driving force in the Oxford Anti-Apartheid Group, successfully campaigning to get her employer, the Oxford City Council, to disinvest its pension fund from apartheid South Africa.

As Oxford’s Assistant Community Relations Officer, Anne successfully dealt with racial discrimination cases.

Working with women from the black community, like the inspiring Jean Pearce, Anne built initiatives like Saturday Schools, Black History Month and Martin Luther King Day to celebrate black culture and to campaign for equal opportunities.

In the early eighties, she moved to Hackney to become Community Relations Officer, but returned to Oxford in the late 80s to become Oxford City Council’s event’s officer. This role enabled her to work with others to set up the successful music festival, Fun in the Parks and Oxford’s International Women’s Festival.

Anne was an energetic and dynamic networker, making links across community organisations in Oxford to collaborate on events from raising awareness of homelessness with huge overnight sleep outs in a freezing South Park or celebrating women in science with the Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lectures.

On retirement, Anne threw herself into the battle to win migrants’ freedom from detention and was part of the successful struggle to close the Campsfield Detention Centre.

In her eighties, Anne organised activities for elders in Oxford, in Jericho’s vibrant Alive and Kicking group along with enjoying the love of her many friends, children, grandchildren and their children, in her beautiful garden.

Anne Mobbs died on October 16 aged 84.

She leaves son Keir, daughters Ruth and Amanda, grandchildren Maya, Sam, Shadé, Robin and Alice, and great-grandchildren.

This obituary first appeared in the Oxford Mail

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