Remembering Wendy Pettifer

Former Hackney Community Law Centre (HCLC) solicitor, Wendy Pettifer, has died at the age of 72 after a long illness.

Wendy worked at the Law Centre as a housing solicitor for seven years from 2009 before retiring in 2016. Prior to this, she served on the management committee in the early 1990s and in 2004–05 volunteered her services to the Law Centre’s housing advice team.

Before qualifying as a solicitor in the early 1990s, Wendy spent time as a community worker at South Manchester Law Centre in the 1970s. She then went on to work in private practice at Wilsons Solicitors in Tottenham and later at the College of Law.

Over the course of her career, Wendy specialised in cases involving homelessness, serious disrepair, migrant women, and children. One such case, Harrow v Fahia, reached the House of Lords. Wendy’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. Wendy brought a determination and tenacity to her work, always seeking to achieve the best outcomes for her clients in the pursuit of social justice.

Alongside her career in housing law, Wendy 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 REMDH. Always relishing a challenge, in 2016, Wendy used her legal skills and fluent knowledge of French to volunteer with La Cabane Juridique and support refugees living in inhumane conditions in what was then known as the Calais “Jungle.”

Outside her legal work, Wendy was a talented poet. Since retiring, she published two books of poems: Love Lines and The Witching Hour.

Wendy will be remembered fondly in the Law Centres community for her activist spirit and life-long commitment to social justice.

Director of Hackney Community Law Centre, Sean Canning, 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 facing destitution."

Chair of Hackney Community Law Centre, 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 Law Centre. She never really ‘retired’, surprising some of us with her poetry which she gave public recitals of, and helping us out at the centre. Wendy was one of the many great characters that make up this wonderful Law Centres movement."

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