Hundreds if not thousands of schoolchildren owe an invaluable debt to one Bermondsey gran, who sadly passed away last month.
Kate Southion achieved what many thought impossible at the time – the building of a brand-new secondary school for the area.
The new millennium had arrived, but for hundreds of local children in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe hoping to make the leap from primary to secondary school, they found themselves without a place. This included two of Kate’s very own grandchildren.
The area had once been home to a few secondary schools which had to shut down. This once bustling working-class area saw a decline in families as high-flying professionals came in to buy properties in the warehouses and factories that had lain derelict since the docks closed.
New homes, especially in Rotherhithe’s Downtown area, had been built in the late 1980s and 1990s, as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s London Docklands Development Corporation tried to regenerate the peninsula, while erecting Canary Wharf as a second business district for London, just across the river.
The planners had made contingencies for primary school places, but as the years went by these kids of course grew up and where there were once large schools like Scott Lidgett in Bermondsey, nothing new had come to replace it.
Kate Southion was not a politician; she was not a high-flying businesswoman, yet anyone who came across her could hardly describe her as ordinary.
This Bermondsey battle axe was a barmaid, mum of five and nan to a growing brood of grandchildren, that at the time of her death amounted to 20.
Living on Bermondsey’s largest council estate, the Four Squares, Kate was already known as a woman who got things done. “Mum used to get everyone together and hire coaches so all of us could go to Margate, Thrope Park and Chessington World of Adventures, she was always doing things for the kids,” her son Michael told us this week.
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But when Michael’s daughter Terri found herself without a school place, despite being extremely bright, Kate could not just go out collecting and somehow get a school built for her in the area – or could she?
Kate rang us at the Southwark News and got all the parents she knew whose kids were without a place, plus advertised down the nearby Blue shopping area and demanded they come together at the Four Squares Tenants’ and Residents’ Association hall.
We were shocked to find all the kids lined up and ready to be pictured and documented for a featured campaign simply asking, ‘Where are we to go?’
The reaction from local people was instant, MP Simon Hughes immediately gave it his wholehearted support and Kate even managed to get all parties at Southwark Council to back her.
But where was the money going to come from? Southwark Council did not have enough, and the government was not ready to commit to the entire funding.
While the bigwigs were searching around for pots of funding Kate Southion was busy setting up a self-help school in a space above Rotherhithe Library, with many teachers volunteering their time. It closed in December 2001 with the promise of a brand-new academy opening on the run-down former Patterson Park site, off St James’s Road.
The new school intended to specialise in business and enterprise and as sponsor of the school, The Corporation of London had committed £2m to the building costs, with the rest of the funding provided by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).
The establishment of the Academy had been fully supported by Southwark Education Authority, which was providing the site. It was all ready to go, but the then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone blocked it.
Mr Livingstone said the school should not be built at the expense of another public amenity.
“Paterson Park is the only public green space in the area. The park should be improved for local people, not taken away from them,” he said.
Kate and over 100 parents were outraged and held protests in Paterson Park. They then staged a sit-in at the Mayor’s Romney House offices. After some behind-the-scenes negotiations with Southwark Council, Livingstone agreed to review his objection.
Kate, more than 100 children and their parents wore T-shirts bearing an image of the mayor and the slogan ‘This man said no to my school’, when they descended on Romney House.
Southwark agreed to invest £20 million in its parks over the next decade and council leader Stephanie Elsy assured Livingstone that two extra parks would be created near the site. The Corporation of London also increased the area of public parkland in the masterplan.
The school operated for a couple of years from a temporary site in Peckham Rye, and the City Academy opened to 180 Year 7 pupils from Southwark and the City of London in September 2003. The City of London Academy is now a permanent fixture, teaching 1,200 pupils aged 11-19 since opening at Patterson Park in September 2005.
Whether the thousands that have attended the school in the last 20 years know of Kate Southion is doubtful. “Mum did get some recognition, she was given the Liberty of the Old Borough of Bermondsey a good few years back, so could drive some sheep across the bridge and the kids that knew her back then were grateful, but that was about it,” Michael said.
Kate’s sudden death has shocked her family – after a short stay in St Thomas Hospital suffering what the family believe was a series of mini heart attacks, she passed away surrounded by her loved ones on March 23.
In total Kate, aged 79, had five children, 20 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren. This mother-figure to hundreds more was a typical working-class woman, who was born in Dulwich Hospital on March 18, 1946, one of four-children to Ivy Jones and her old man Charlie, who was a dustman.
She was happy married to Bill for 52 years until he passed away in September 2017. Michael says: “Mum was the best, she was hard – you would not mess with her, but she did everything for everyone and asked for nothing in return.”
Her granddaughter Katie, who is named after her, said: “She was my rock, my soul mate, my everything. I talk to her every morning, and she’d be the last person I’d call at night. She might be my Nan but she was also my best friend.”
Former MP Simon Hughes paid tribute saying: “Kate Southion was a feisty campaigner for local school places for local children. Kate’s work with others for her community was a model of how committed people can make a difference for better for their neighbours. She will not be forgotten.”
FUNERAL DEATAILS
Kate funeral cortege will leave Swan Road, SE16 at 1pm for a service to be held at Honor Oak Crematorium at 2pm on Friday April 25 followed by a wake at the Brunel pub in Rotherhithe.
