Mildred Gordon

Mildred Gordon (née Fellerman; 24 August 1923 – 8 April 2016) was a British Labour politician.

Biography

Early life Mildred Gordon was born the daughter of Judah and Dora Fellerman in Stepney in 1923. Judah was of Dutch Jewish descent, Dora from a Bessarabian Jewish family. Her father and grandfather were stallholders in Watney Market; her father also served as a member of Stepney Borough Council. She attended Betts Street and Christian Street Schools, before attending Raines School and secretarial college. She worked in a solicitor's office, from which she was unable to get release for army service in the Second World War, so she volunteered to be an air raid warden instead. She became a teacher in 1945, and her first post was at Nicholas Gibson School in The Highway, Stepney. Her husband was at that time the secretary of the Trotskyist Fourth International, and worked as a printer, while Mildred Gordon herself continued in her occupation as a teacher. She and her husband were prevented from returning to the US in 1952, as his passport had been taken, after visiting her family in the UK. and stayed with him for two periods.

Before being elected to Parliament, Gordon was variously a school governor, governor of Hackney College, and a visiting typewriting teacher, retraining women in HM Prison Holloway. She was also the adviser on older women to the Women's Committee of the Greater London Council (GLC) during Ken Livingstone's tenure as GLC Leader. A long-time Labour Party activist, Gordon had been a Labour candidate for Hendon Borough Council, for the GLC, and for the European Parliament in the first direct elections in 1979. She joined the executive of the London Labour Party in 1983.

Gordon's constituency disappeared at the 1997 general election; she was not selected for either of the successor seats, being succeeded by Jim Fitzpatrick in Poplar and Canning Town, while Oona King was elected for Bethnal Green and Bow.

Later life Gordon was awarded the Freedom of the Borough of Tower Hamlets in 1999.