Wendy Pettifer. Photograph: courtesy Hackney Migrant Centre
Tributes have poured in for Wendy Pettifer, a housing lawyer and founding member of Hackney Migrant Centre, who has died aged 72 after a long illness.
Pettifer was a community worker at South Manchester Law Centre before qualifying as a solicitor in the 1990s.
She later moved into private practice at Wilsons Solicitors in Tottenham.
Pettifer was working at the College of Law when the Hackney Migrant Centre (HMC) was established in 2008.
She arranged for one of her colleagues to offer HMC’s visitors pro bono immigration advice, while she did the same for housing.
It was the start of HMC’s long history of providing free legal advice to migrants across north London.
As Rayah, HMC’s founder chair, said she would leave a “big hole”.
“Wendy was a real stalwart defender of migrants’ rights and had a deep commitment to HMC and its grassroots approach to supporting migrants.
“She brought both political activism and a wealth of legal experience and expertise to her work with HMC and helped shape both its ethos and the high quality of advice it aimed to achieve.”
In 2009, Pettifer joined Hackney Community Law Centre (HCLC) as a housing solicitor and remained there until her retirement in 2016.
Over the course of her career, Pettifer specialised in cases involving homelessness, serious disrepair, migrant women and children.
One such case, Harrow v Fahia, reached the House of Lords.
Pettifer’s efforts saw the definition of settled accommodation expanded to include people who had not possessed a formal tenancy at the time they became homeless.
HCLC chair Cllr Ian Rathbone said: “Wendy was also an inspiring trainer of others, and as a mentor helped many juniors and other team members with their problems as well as giving useful campaigning directions at times to the centre.
“And she never really ‘retired’, surprising some of us with her poetry which she gave public recitals of, and helping us out at the centre.
“Some years ago, she sent me an article she had written noting that decades had passed since the groundbreaking film Cathy Come Home and asking, ‘Have things changed very much since then?’
“It was a good question that I think we know the answer to, sadly. She was one of the many great characters that make up this wonderful law centre movement.”
Alongside her career, Pettifer was a dedicated campaigner and took part in international legal work.
She sat on the Executive of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, was a member of the Greek Solidarity Campaign and between 2009 and 2011 travelled regularly to Tunisia with human rights network REMDH.
In 2016, Pettifer used her legal skills and fluent French to volunteer for several months in Calais, where she supported other voluntary lawyers who were helping migrant children apply to join close family members in the UK.
Sean Canning, director of HCLC, said: “Wendy was a fierce radical social justice warrior who used her legal skills and abundant energy to achieve the best for clients and the local community.
“She was a dedicated internationalist who believed that law and politics should be harnessed to achieve social justice for the most socially disadvantaged and improve the lives of refugees and those fleeing destitution.”
Outside of her legal work, Pettifer was a talented poet.
Following her retirement, she published two books: Love Lines, and The Witching Hour.
She often donated funds raised from her poetry to HMC, and would visit to give readings.
Pettifer’s family have issued an invitation to everyone connected with HMC to come to a celebration of her life on Wednesday 30 July.
The day begins at 9.30am, and the family has asked thos planning to attend to fill out a form, which can be found here.