‘Fiercely intellectual’ Shaku Woodrow

YOU would often hear her before you saw her, cycling around the streets on a rickety old tricycle, her son in the basket, singing at the top of her lungs.

A tireless campaigner, who saved community buildings from development, knocked on doors in her sari canvassing for the Labour Party and ran events like the Queen’s Square Fair, Shaku Woodrow has died aged 81 of Parkinson’s.

Ms Woodrow was born in Chennai in 1944 into a Hindu Brahmin family.

Her father was one of the first diplomats appointed after Indian independence. Her family left India when she was four to live in Russia, and then went on to the United States before she later settled in the United Kingdom.

“My mother grew up reasonably political, she was a 1960s feminist,” said her son Jay Daley, who was born during a time living in Belgrade, Serbia.

“She was fiercely intellectual, even with dementia in a care home, unable to remember what time of day it was, the nurses would say how sharp she was.

“Her heart was always in the right place.

“Being an activist was her life and hobby.”

Ms Woodrow settled in Holborn, first in Roger Street off Gray’s Inn Road, then in Rokeby House off Lamb’s Conduit Street in 1977 where she lived until moving into a care home in Belsize Park early last year.

She worked for much of her life as a typesetter, laying out exhibition text for the British Museum exhibitions.

In the 1980s she founded a women’s workers cooperative called Sisters, near the Bourne Estate, typesetting for mostly women-owned businesses.

She later had a part-time role working on pages at the Camden New Journal.

Ms Woodrow was instrumental in many local campaigns. She was the chair and one of the founders of the Bedford Community Centre, now Holborn House, and helped save the Holborn Library more than once from local authority attempts to knock it down and sell it off.

Shaku with her husband Brian, a former Covent Garden ward councillor and chair of planning

She was an active member of the Rugby and Harpur Residents’ Association and was also a governor at St George the Martyr School.

Then there were the hours spent helping organise the Queen’s Square Fair which began in Bloomsbury in 1974, and where she met her late husband, Brian Woodrow, a former Holborn and Covent Garden ward councillor.

They married in 1977. Mr Woodrow later became well known as the chair of Camden’s planning committee.

Mr Daley said: “My mother loved Holborn. She would be out organising or running campaigns or visiting people, trying to help out.

She was very community focused.

“Growing up at that time, we were the only Indian family in that part of Holborn.

“She didn’t normally wear a sari but would often put one on to go round door-knocking, canvassing for the Labour Party.

“She’d often be met with screaming but she didn’t care. She was known for being formidable.”

Ms Woodrow’s neighbour of more than 50 years, Michael Pountney, said: “She was a woman of great strength of mind and determination. She wasn’t afraid of anybody.

“You couldn’t squash her, she wouldn’t give up, and very often she would approach any particular issue in a completely unexpected way.

“Her independence of thought was of great value in the local area.”

Ward councillor Sue Vincent said: “She was a remarkably generous woman who was quick to laughter, a deep thinker and always had calm words of wisdom.

“We in the community stand on the shoulders of giants, and Shaku was certainly a giantess in the neighbourhood.”

When she wasn’t playing an active role in her community, Ms Woodrow could be found completing a crossword, or listening to Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers or Radio 4.

She liked musicals such as Oklahoma! and enjoyed reading romance novels.

She returned to India several times with Jay and Brian, and even self-published an Indian cook book based on her grandmother’s recipes.

Mr Daley said: “They did go on a couple of holidays, but otherwise her and Brian’s entire life was dedicated to those few square kilometres in Holborn.”

A service was held for Ms Woodrow at the Calthorpe Community Garden on Wednesday evening.