My grandmother, Alice Searle, who has died aged 88, was an English and sociology teacher. She spent much of her time lobbying for community improvements, especially in the Manchester area, where she was born and returned to later in life.
A socialist and feminist, she involved herself in various progressive campaigns over the years, including attempts to make Salford City Football Club more responsive to the needs of local people. Alice was also part of the successful lobbying for a monument to the Chartists to be placed on Kersal Moor.
Born in Failsworth, she was the daughter of David Cowap, an electrical engineer and trade unionist, and Olive (nee Wilson), a seamstress.
During the second world war the family moved to the village of Llanfihangel-Nant-Melan in Powys, where Alice’s mother took over the running of the local pub. One day the building was accidentally shot at by forces training nearby and bullets would be found in the family piano for many years afterwards. Alice’s father did not accompany them to Wales, and years later they discovered why – he was part of a secret mission to demolish the National Grid if the UK were invaded.
Back in Manchester, Alice completed her studies at Fallowfield C of E high school for girls before the family moved to the Isle of Wight, this time so that her father could take up a job as an engineer on hovercrafts.
Alice became the Cowes carnival queen of 1957 and was courted by soldiers on national service assigned to care for the Royal Artillery’s yachts. Later that year she married one of them – Jim Searle – who became a woodwork teacher.
After graduating from Southampton University with a degree in economics, Alice began her teaching career in 1960 at Cowes high school before moving to Dudley Junior Technical College in the West Midlands in 1962. She resigned in 1964 to look after her children, but in 1971 picked up again as a part-timer at a village school in Sloley, Norfolk. In 1973 she accepted a full-time post at Norwich City College, teaching sociology and then adult social care. Alice’s marriage ended in divorce in 1979.
After taking time off for solo travel around the world in 1985 and 1986, she returned to the college, and had risen to be a principal lecturer by the time she left in 1993. She then did VSO work in Fiji, Tuvalu and South Africa, where she set up the Pin Project, supporting families affected by the Aids crisis, with the charity’s beaded badges worn by everyone from Richard E Grant to Germaine Greer.
In 2005 she moved to Salford, where she took up her community campaigning.
She is survived by her four sons, Chris, Richard, Gavin and Clive, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
