Helena Sanders

Helena Sanders née Charles (16 April 1911 – 14 June 1997) was a humanitarian, cultural activist, politician and poet. Sanders was the founder of the political party, Mebyon Kernow, in 1951. She was also well known for her feline welfare efforts in Venice.

Biography Sanders was born in Kolkata. Her mother died when she was three.

In the 1920s she worked in the slums of Bermondsey. During the Second World War, she joined the London Ambulance Service.

Sanders was the first leader of the Cornish political party Mebyon Kernow (MK), founded by herself in January 1951. Sanders felt that Cornish culture was being destroyed. She went on to lead the party for four years. Sanders was the also the first person to put MK policies to the electorate when she won a seat on Camborne–Redruth Urban District Council in 1953. She was succeeded as Chairman of MK by Major Cecil Beer in 1957.

Sanders also founded and served as editor for New Cornwall, a monthly magazine effectively serving as the voice of Mebyon Kernow. She was interested in the governing structure of the Isle of Man as a potential model for Cornwall and sympathized with other Celtic nationalist and separatist movements.

She became a member of Gorseth Kernow under the Bardic name of Maghteth Boudycca ('Daughter of Boudicca') at Trethevy Quoit in 1953. She organised residential courses in the Cornish language, where Richard Gendall and Tony Snell met and wrote poetry in the language.

She married Guy Sanders, a sculptor, in 1959. Eventually, Sanders and Hawkins were able to educate residents about the cats and how to improve their living conditions. Some strays were killed due to health issues and others were neutered with the consent of Venetian authorities. Sanders and Hawkins were the first people in Italy to use the process of trap-neuter-return (TNR) to control cat populations. Her husband, Guy, became a licensed gondolier to help raise money for Dingo. A book, by Frank Wintle, Helena Sanders and the Cats of Venice: The Story of a Remarkable Woman was published in 1989.

The Dingo charity continued to look after colonies of cats in Venice after Sanders' death. Dingo has helped bring the number of stray cats in Venice down from 12,000 to 2,000.

Publications What is home rule? (New Cornwall pamphlet No.1) Redruth: New Cornwall, [ca. 1953] New Cornwall - a political magazine. Founded by Richard Gendall in 1952; edited by Helena Charles; from 1956 edited by Richard and Ann Jenkin