Mo, Maureen, MoRo, Mum

Alderman Maureen Rowbotham

If she was your friend you had your own personal champion.
If she didn't have my dad she would have chosen Tiger Woods, Eric Cantona or Alex Ferguson as her fella.
She could blame most things on the Tories except the recent appointment of Jose Mourinho who should hereby be known as the 'arrogant misogynist Mourinho'.
There was always a project and always a cause, she really did want a statue for women mill workers to reflect our towns history. Growing up we knew we were never to buy a 'silent night' mattress because of how they treated their striking workers, we shouldn't really use postcodes in case they put a postman out of work and I know for a fact she gave her last pennies to the wife of a striking miner.
Mo could never be described as tidy but whatever you needed, be it double sided sticky tape, a book of unused raffle tickets or those minutes from that meeting in 1982 she would have it and find it in an instant.
My mum had her own language, we would eat chippo with a forkers in the fronters room wearing our slipbombs in our chubby jumpers.
She believed in equality so much so she always made sure that my sister and I had the exact same sized potatoes and exactly the same number of peas.
So have a dance the next time you hear Bob Marley or Ray Charles and remember the day we honoured Maureen Rowbotham by singing the Socialist Anthem in Middleton Parish Church.