Phyllis Cooper was a Mayor of Fulham in 1961 and Deputy Mayor in 1962. She was also a former Chairman of the Finance Committee and  served the Council and Labour Party well for a number of decades. She lived a few doors away from my family at 78 Broughton Road and worked in the accounts department of the Co-op store in Wandsworth Bridge Road.

A spinster, I remember her as a short and rather twitchy woman. She was a friend of my parent's tenant Edith Allen, who had known her as a little girl. Miss Cooper visited her elderly friend once a week but Edie often mimicked her mannerisms behind her back.   Phyllis sadly died alone  of a suspected heart attack during the 1980s. Her house in Broughton Road was being modernised and she had moved to nearby Furness Road.

Fulham was a Labour stronghold from 1951 until the late 1970s. The sitting member was Michael Stewart, who held ministerial posts in the Harold Wilson Labour Government of the sixties. He was a popular Member of Parliament and achieved large majorities at General Elections. But the gradual 'Chelseafication' of the Borough during the housing boom of the seventies saw the political complexion change from red to blue and Martin Stevens won the seat for the Conservatives in 1978.

I was a Labour supporter during those years and one of my fondest memories was of spending an election night at the local committee rooms at no 112 Broughton Road, consuming alcohol and listening to Ward Secretary Derek Shaw’s Steelye Span folk music.