Deborah Mary Anne Sawday - 11th July 1944 to 19th October 2021
[With thanks to the ULAS Newsletter for the photo above and quote below.]
Almost no-one involved with Leicester Friends of the Earth in the last forty plus years can say they didn’t know Debbie Sawday. Determined, persuasive, creative, energetic fun-loving and effective as a committed environmentalist and campaigner - she has left a unique and lasting imprint on the group.
Born into a family with a successful local architectural practice, and the great granddaughter of Arthur Wakerley, who himself left his mark on Leicester politics and buildings, Debbie’s chosen career path was in archaeology, in which she developed a high level of specialism, becoming an expert in post-Roman and medieval pottery and earthenware.
As might be expected, Debbie’s funeral on Friday 5th November 2021 at Great Glen Crematorium, was very well attended, and included a number of former Leicester FoE campaigners, some even harking back to its beginnings.
We heard from her nephew Jonathon how she lived in London, on the King’s Road at the height of the swinging sixties, her dress and makeup responding fashionably to the Mary Quant look.
Her Leicester University work colleagues, too, recognised the multi-talented person that Debbie was. This extract from the ULAS (University of Leicester Archaeological Service) newsletter attests:
“…….. Debbie was University of Leicester Archaeological Services’ medieval pottery specialist, and had built up an encyclopaedic knowledge of her subject over more than forty years, with hundreds of reports to her name, including contributions to chapters in the recently-published Life in Roman and medieval Leicester volume.”
Debbie made sure her colleagues recognised and responded to environmental concerns:
“…….in terms of politics and attitudes, Debbie was very much a child of the 60s; she was ‘green’ before it was fashionable, never owned a car, cycled everywhere and was a passionate campaigner for Friends of the Earth. Her colleagues were used to having the latest petition thrust into their hands for signing, on entering the office!”
See full article here.
Rachel Harriss – a campaigner in the 80s and 90s recalls;
“Debbie was a tour de force. You could not help but be drawn in by her energy and conviction. She was seemingly effortlessly adept at writing eloquent, and persuasive letters at the drop of the hat and shared her skills readily, rallying us all to do the same.
Hugely well informed, she was an avid devourer of the Environment pages of the Guardian and her newspaper clippings cabinet at 122 London Road was legendary. In her articles for the newsletters, she pared down complex issues and gave us action points and catchy slogans that we could easily take out on to the streets.
She also knew how to have fun. I recall many a late night at campaign HQ, or 122, as it simply became known, glass of red to hand, as we fashioned sandwich boards out of scavenged cardboard and poster paints. There were quite a number of parties, too, at Debbie’s then home (and one of the Leicester’s Arthur Wakerley buildings). On those hot summer evenings enjoying the open air on her cast iron balcony, it was a mix of friends, work colleagues and FoE co-campaigners.
Debbie was also not averse to a spot of dressing up. I remember us commandeering a dinghy and dressing up in wetsuits, snorkels and armbands, ready to battle rising waters in a ‘Greenhouse Effect’ day of action.
April 1989 stays with me particularly, calling on our High Street banks to reduce or write off the huge foreign debts accumulated by countries such as Brazil, whose government was hell bent on cutting down rainforests, in order to keep up with interest payments. The burning season was about to begin again, forcing tribal peoples from forest homes, killing off rare species of plants and animals and releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide. Debbie arranged for some full-blown street theatre. Mourners, all in black, we staged a symbolic funeral procession down the London Road, armed with a cardboard coffin and a giant sized £3 billion cheque to pay Brazil to safeguard the forests for us all. I recall her fetching down one of her curtains to drape over the coffin - she knew both how to repurpose and to live lightly. We made merry hell outside the banks, collected hundreds of signatures, distributed thousands of leaflets and hit the Leicester Mercury big time.”
Debbie was rainforest campaigner for some time in the 1980s and ‘90s. Her resourcefulness, determination and indefatigability made for interesting and exciting events that drew public attention, poured scorn on careless and indifferent companies and institutions and contributed to the mounting pressure for action.
Another occasion, in 1993, helping to make and carry a giant draught excluder, Debbie joined the energy group drawing attention to the profligate waste of energy through the many and large shop open doors.
Harriet Pugsley recalls, along with Debbie and Sue Eppel taking part in a Day of Action at Raab Karcher, the timber merchant on Bede Island South. “We brazenly walked in and 'stole' away some tropical hard wood that we then labelled as being stolen property from the Brazilian Amazon. Of course, this caused some consternation. The police being called, we had made our point and left without being handcuffed or locked up”.
Celia Barden and I visited Debbie a few weeks before her death. She was undergoing further treatment for secondary cancers. Though fatigued, she was very positive and showed us around her lovely gardens at Knighton Church Road. The rear garden had a pond and many native species in the lawn and surrounding beds.
We miss you, Debbie.
Alan Gledhill
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