Wendy Pettifer: Obituary (1953 - 2025)

Our much-loved comrade Wendy Pettifer died in early July 2025, aged 72, born in 1953.

Among her many talents, Wendy was fluent in French, and could speak German and Italian.

From 1977, aged 24, Wendy was a community worker in Manchester Law Centre, and spent a short time working at a women’s refuge in London. She then worked as an advice worker at Centerprise, the Hackney Centerprise Co-operative,from 1980 to 1989. It was forced to close in 2013. She was attracted by the collective style of working in an advice service that broadly aimed to empower as well as help its clients. Wendy saw that the advice centre punched above its weight and was involved in various campaigns, often with tenants’ associations. Wendy herself concentrated on housing and benefits, although she had some landmark successes in early deportation cases where legal action was combined with community campaigns.  

In her spare time she joined the Hackney Women Writers group and published her own creative writing.

From 1985 she worked part time at Centerprise while studying to become a solicitor. She qualified in 1992 aged 39, and worked in private practice at Wilsons Solicitors in Tottenham and later at the College of Law, before joining Hackney Law Centre. She also gained an MA in Refugee Studies from the University of East London

She became a Trustee of Social Workers without Borders and was active in the Greek Solidarity Campaign. She participated in overseas missions in Egypt (refugee project), Tunisia (the expulsion of the Ben Ali regime in 2011) and Kenya. She also worked as a solicitor at ATLEU (Anti Trafficking Labour Exploitation Unit).

Wendy worked at the Hackney Law Centre as a housing solicitor for seven years from 2009 before retiring in 2016. Prior to this, she served on the management committee in the early 1990s and in 2004–05 volunteered her services to the Law Centre’s housing advice team. She was a member of the Hackney Labour Party,

Over the course of her career, Wendy specialised in cases involving homelessness, serious disrepair, migrant women, and children. One such case, Harrow v Fahia, reached the House of Lords. Wendy’s efforts saw the definition of settled accommodation expanded to include people who had not possessed a formal tenancy at the time they became homeless. Wendy brought a determination and tenacity to her work, always seeking to achieve the best outcomes for her clients in the pursuit of social justice.

Alongside her career in housing law, Wendy was a dedicated campaigner and took part in international legal work.

She was elected to the Executive Committee of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, was a member of the Greek Solidarity Campaign, and between 2009 and 2011 travelled regularly to Tunisia with REMDH. Always relishing a challenge, in 2016, Wendy used her legal skills and fluent knowledge of French to volunteer with La Cabane Juridique and support refugees living in inhumane conditions in what was then known as the Calais “Jungle.”

For reasons of ill-health, bowel cancer, for which she had magnificent support in the NHS, and periods of emission, she did not stand for the Haldane Executive in January 2021.

Wendy represented Haldane on the Executive Committee of the European Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights, of which Haldane was a founder member in 1993, and now has members in 23 European countries.

In November 2018 she participated in the work of theInternational Academy of the Aegean, in Nesin Mathematical Village, Şirince, Izmir, Turkey. At the online meeting in November 2020 she reported on Haldane’s Hostile Environments conference, and took on the leadership of the ELDH’s Subcommittee on the protection of refugees. The last online meeting of the ELDH Exec in which she participated was on 20 February 2024.

Wendy wrote poetry all her life, but after retirement published two collections: Love Lines (2020) and The Witching Hour (2021). On the evening of Friday 3rd September 2021 in a covered "arts venue" area at the side of St. Mary's Old Church in Stoke Newington, Wendy held a well-attended book launch for her second poetry collection, "The Witching Hour". All revenue from sales went to the Care4Calais Refugee Crisis Charity. You can watch Wendy reading her poetry in a moving video at https://youtu.be/5SjD2q2N3Ys

Bill Bowring

Wendy Pettifer (L) in conversation with a former colleague at a Law Centres reunion event in 2024.