Heartbreaking tributes to 'heart of community' hero who helped thousands
People began arriving early at the Ex-Servicemen’s Club to pay their respects to community worker Barbara Nettleton. A celebration befitting a woman who has helped thousands of people over more than two decades.
“She was the heart of this community,” said Joanne Boon-Thomas, 59. “There should be a statue of her in Wigan. She gave her life for this community. She worked all her life for other people – people who had nothing – to improve lives, to provide an expectation of more. Kids had shoes, and families had food on the table because of Barbara.”
Joanne smiled. “Her hugs were amazing too.” The founder of Sunshine House community hub in Scholes, Wigan, passed away last month aged 75 after a short illness. Honoured with a star on Wigan’s Believe Square in 2016 – and a second pavement star outside Sunshine House itself – Barbara was a community legend.
“Barbara was a no-nonsense, totally tireless campaigner who never ever took no for an answer,” her local Labour MP, Lisa Nandy, said. “In all the years I knew her, she never let me leave Sunshine House without a to-do list. She always refused to accept that anyone could be written off or that her community deserved anything but the best.
“She believed in people, and we believed in her. It’s hard to believe she’s gone.” By poignant coincidence, it was the fifth anniversary this weekend of the launch of the Mirror’s Wigan Pier Project, hosted by Sunshine House, which retraced George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier while shining a spotlight on the suffering under Tory austerity.
Barbara with her dad as a baby (Andy Stenning/Daily Mirror)At the community meeting, the hostility to Orwell’s 1937 book on poverty in Northern England had been palpable. People said it had given the town a bad name. But then Barbara spoke up. She was going to take part in the project, she said, because it would give people in Wigan a voice. Her contribution included sharing a story about helping a pregnant woman living in a shed and explaining her philosophy of community activism.
“If someone’s hungry,” she said, “we feed them, and ask questions later.” Over the next five years, my colleagues Claire Donnelly, Maryam Qaiser, photographer Andy Stenning and I visited Sunshine House many times, building the project, and hearing about the struggles and successes of people in Scholes.
Sunshine House was within a hundred yards of the tripe shop Orwell had made famous, meaning it had special meaning for many Orwell historians. George Orwell’s son Richard Blair, and the son of his commander in Spain, Quentin Kopp, were regular visitors as part of the Orwell Society.
“Barbara gave everything of herself for others,” Quentin told me. “We know that we have lost a great friend.” When we returned after the Covid pandemic, we found Scholes supported by Barbara and her band of volunteers. “We never closed our doors through the whole pandemic,” Barbara said. “I don’t know why. I don’t think we thought about it.”
Monday’s memorial was organised by Pauline Brown, 68, whose late mum, Eileen, was Barbara’s best friend, colleague and co-conspirator. The two women were invited to the Queen’s Garden Party at Holyrood House together. “We set up this day to say our goodbyes,” Pauline said. “If Barbara was here, she’d be going mad because she never wanted praise – but so many people loved her, and we wanted to be here.”
Cake commemorating Barbara (Andy Stenning/Daily Mirror)Angela Sargent, 76, who was a Sunshine House regular, attending its classes, said: “You can’t put in to words the difference she made in this community.” Barbara always said she was inspired by her mum’s work in the community. In 1997, when the estate was flooded with drugs, and one of Barbara’s neighbours was beaten to death in his home, she decided enough was enough.
The One Voice Residents’ Association she set up became a full-time mission, with residents popping into the former rent office to ask for help. Under Barbara’s leadership – and helped by her late husband, David, a construction worker – the group began cleaning up areas, improving safety and applying for grants. Pauline remembers her mum and Barbara getting security gates put on the back streets of terraced houses to protect residents. There was also a credit union – and there were always art classes.
“Barbara was doing this at a time when no one else was, she was a pioneer,” says Debbie Brown, 58, who met Barbara in 1997. “She taught people to expect more.” The association became Sunshine House, where Barbara employed mums on school-friendly hours, and people who had left prison, creating a space for those who were lonely, disabled, bereaved or looking for a place to be creative.
The cafe was a haven of good jobs and affordable food. Later, there were summer holiday lunches for kids, uniform shops, charity shops and a food pantry. Her youth work – “She walked the streets to get kids off the streets”, Pauline says – was honoured with a Queen’s Jubilee Award.
Barbara’s mission was help with human dignity attached – the kind of working-class solidarity the young writer George Orwell envied on his road to Wigan Pier. “We offer help that allows people to feel OK about themselves,” Barbara told us. “Support that remembers we are all human.”
Wigan has lost a great champion in Barbara Nettleton, but our lives are that bit better from having known her. Mary Rowbottom, 80, said Barbara had “saved my life – and I wasn’t the only one… She gave to everyone who ever walked through her door.”
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