IT IS devastatingly sad news that Maggie Bowden has died one day short of her 95th birthday. My wife Laura and I visited her one last time before she died, and we’ve been reflecting on her life.

Maggie was always active on a whole range of political issues and a supporter of Liberation, which at that time was called the Movement for Colonial Freedom.

She worked as a lawyer, met and married John Bowden, and together they had a wonderful daughter, Katie, who was with her mother right to the end.

I got to know Maggie when she asked me to help by being a parliamentary liaison for Liberation. I later became chair of Liberation until I was succeeded by Kelvin Hopkins MP.

Maggie and I got on very well indeed.

I was always impressed with her commitment to knowledge and foreign affairs, not always headliners but passionate causes.

She took up the cause of the “comfort women” who were sex slaves and recruited by the Japanese forces in World War II, and she won compensation for many of them. They got more recognition despite their very advanced age.

She also strongly supported the Dalit rights campaign and, because of Maggie, Liberation supported the good work of the Dalit Solidarity Campaign and took this up at the UN in Geneva.

She and I had to go to the UN Economic and Social Council in New York to defend Liberation’s UN accreditation from an attack by some governments who were annoyed at us taking up these kinds of issues.  We were successful, and Liberation remains an accredited organisation to the UN, which is a valuable status to have.

Maggie was one of a kind, who did a fantastic job on behalf of Liberation, and showed the most amazing dedication to the organisation. She was a wonderful example of someone who’d grown up in poverty, was educated in the cooperative system, and then went on to study law. She’ll be greatly missed.

We must thank her for all she did and the inspiration she was.

Jeremy Corbyn is independent MP for Islington North.