Battle-hardened campaigner Coral Newell, who served the communities of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe for over half a century, sadly passed away last week.
The 87-year-old’s sudden death will be felt by many of area’s veteran political figures and the countless families she has helped, in what was a life-long mission for the Rotherhithe-born campaigner.
A Labour stalwart, the former councillor who headed up the Beormund Community Centre until its closure just after the pandemic, died unexpectedly in her flat on the Southwark Park Road Estate last Friday.
Her early life was marked by adversity as she lost her mother aged just six-years-old and as the bombs rained down on the docklands surrounding her childhood home she was forced like so many of her age into evacuation.
But it was only a brief spell away from the area she loved so much and it appeared to have ignited a passion in a woman who was determined to rebuild war-torn Southwark and help communities young and old come together.
In an interview with the News just two years ago Coral, who was born in St Olave’s Hospital on Lower Road, Rotherhithe in 1936, explained how she found a love for political activism as a teenager and went on to fight for better facilities for the working-class community she was so proud to be a part of.
Coral grew up on the Amos Estate, off Rotherhithe Street, and said her parents and immediate family were also from the Downtown area of Rotherhithe, but added, “My great-grandfather came from Russia.”
She went to St Paul’s School, then Aylwin and on to Credon Road when it was a girls’ school. “I liked school,” she said, “but I was a bit bolshy, I was always for the underdog.
“My dad was a stevedore and mum unfortunately died when I was six,” she said, reminiscing: “We found space to play cricket and football and skipping on the estate, and the parents used to bring chairs to watch us play.”
War intervened: “I was evacuated to Newport Pagnell, to a policeman’s house, which I didn’t like,” Coral had told the News.
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“My brother was elsewhere and he was ‘loved as the son they never had’, while I was being bolshy and complaining about everything I didn’t like!”
Back in her beloved Rotherhithe Coral recalled: “I got involved with community work when I was about fifteen, when we set up our own youth club on the estate. There was no help from the council but Bob Mellish was really good.”
Bob Mellish was one of Bermondsey’s longest serving MPs and become an inspiration to the young Coral: “He was one of my icons. He looked after my generation because he saw us as the ones that would be taking over from him,” she said.
“He used to take us to the House of Commons and the first time I went I didn’t realise exactly what it was, but looking back now I know it was Bob Mellish and what he did for young people that took me in to politics.”
Coral joined the Labour Party. “I was a local activist to begin with, but campaigned wider for the NHS because the Tories were running it down badly.”
At this time with the docks and related industry dying, Coral was given a real purpose: “As an elected councillor I had a wonderful time; the London Docklands Development Corporation was set up to bring work back to the borough and we wanted their money,” Coral said excitedly. “An awful lot of money was needed from them to make improvements – I got us about £20 million.”
With Councillor Newell doing incredible work it was no surprise that her skills were desired: “I came to the Beormund Centre 41 years ago as a trustee and later became the Chair,” she told the News. In the late 1990s she said “when only about 400 people were coming through every year the building came close to closing and we began looking for someone to come in and manage it properly. Everyone said I should do it although I’d retired by then: ‘You can get us going again,’ they said, and talked me into it. And I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”
Coral continued to run the centre on the corner of Druid Street and Abbey Street right into her eighties – as well as leisure activities and a nursery, she ran training programmes from basic skills right up to accountancy. She would hire rooms out for meetings and conferences and for local residents’ groups with almost 30,000 people a year using the Beormund in its heyday.
But there was never a rest day for Coral. She is equally well-known for setting up an annual Christmas Day dinner for the area’s lonely pensioners. “I started it with my husband 41 years ago, and my daughter, who was only a little girl then, has also done 41 years, bless her heart,” she had told the News.
“It was a lovely thing because those people that we brought in had rarely been outside their houses, but we gave them a thoroughly enjoyable day from morning ’til night. The guests were entertained, royally fed and local dignitaries would pop in to say hello. At the end they would all be taken home and given a goody bag and some money.”
Current Bermondsey MP Neil Coyle said: “For decades Coral has helped so many people in Southwark. I got to know her through the Christmas dinner she organised for older people in Guys Hospital every year for over four decades!
“She was a community-spirited, ever-giving person with a passion for Bermondsey in her blood. Her loss is huge for her family but for Bermondsey and Southwark more widely.”
Her daughter Sian, devastated at the sudden parting of her mum, said: “My mum was so determined she wouldn’t let anything get in her way and from an early age I always remember her helping people. People would come to our flat with their problems, asking for help and she did, she helped them. She was so looking forward to her third great grandchildren George being born, he is due in August. She will be missed so much.”
As well as daughter Sian, Coral leaves behind two grandchildren Joanna and Richard, great grandchildren Evie and Teddy and a legacy of helping those most in need.
