Eleanor Stanier
Former Liberal Democrat mayor of Richmond who was always eager to fight for the underdog
ELEANOR STANIER, who has died aged 81, was an indefatigable and notably effective Liberal Democrat councillor in Richmond upon Thames, where she served as mayor in 2001-02.
For some 30 years after the Second World War the borough was predictably Tory, at both Parliamentary and council levels. Indeed, in the local elections of 1964 and 1968, not a single Liberal candidate was elected. In the 1970s, however, the party began to make progress in Richmond council elections, until in 1986, in alliance with the Social Democratic Party, they conclusively triumphed, winning all but three of the 52 seats.
Even after the Alliance foundered, the Liberal Democrats continued to hold a majority on the council until 2002; and then from 2006 to 2010. Equally, from 1997 to 2010, Richmond Park Parliamentary constituency was represented in the House of Commons by a Liberal Democrat.
Eleanor Stanier personified the energy and idealism which sustained this period of Lib Dem dominance in Richmond. First elected to Richmond Council in 1997 at the head of a by-election poll in Mortlake, she flung herself into every aspect of local affairs, from housing to rubbish disposal, from education to drains.
Apart from a brief interlude in 2002-03, she would serve on the council until 2010, always eager, with her keen sense of social justice, to fight for the underdog. A special concern was to ensure that underprivileged children were properly schooled.
She was born Eleanor Mary Worswick in Oxford on September 8 1942, the eldest of two girls and a boy.
Whereas her grandparents had been Tories, her parents were distinctly Labour. Her father, David Worswick, taught economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, and subsequently became Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
Eleanor was educated at Oxford High School and at St Hilda’s, Oxford, where she read history. In 1965 she married Tom Stanier, who worked in the BBC and became a distinguished producer of programmes for children’s television.
Though the Staniers had three boys between 1968 and 1975, it was never Eleanor’s plan to be permanently housebound. At the beginning of her career, she taught history at Godolphin and Latymer School for Girls. Always practical, and determined to broaden her range, she worked for a year in industry, and then returned to Godolphin to advise on careers.
Eleanor Stanier’s first brush with local issues came around 1970 when, concerned about the widening of Mortlake High Street, she joined the Mortlake with East Sheen Society (MESS). In 1990 she would take up the chair of MESS, and prove her effectiveness in fundraising.
Among the causes she supported were the Mortlake Almshouses, Barnes Hospital, and the Lamplugh Trust, set up to campaign against the harassment of women after the murder of the estate agent Suzy Lamplugh in 1986. In June 2008 the post office in East Sheen was suddenly closed, and the sub-postmaster, Issam Ibrahim, accused of stealing £83,000 from the branch. Eleanor Stanier worked hard with Susan Kramer, Richmond’s MP, to re-open a temporary post office early in 2010, and to plan a more permanent facility. Ibrahim’s one-year prison sentence was suspended.
For all her staunch loyalty to the Liberal Democrats, Eleanor Stanier, instinctively sociable and warmly affectionate, gathered a large circle of friends, of all political views and none. She loved to entertain – “whacking up a table”, she would call it – and certainly at the Staniers’ dinners there was never any danger of flagging conversation.
From 1999 to 2017 the Staniers enjoyed a holiday home at Saint-sernin-du-plain in Burgundy, where, with their instinctive friendliness and hospitality, they greatly forwarded Anglo-french relations, as well as entertaining many English friends.
Saint-sernin-du-plain was the country home of the French composer Patrice Sciotino, who ran a music festival in the hills above the village. Those attending would struggle up the steep incline and eventually encounter a grand piano standing in isolation on the upper reaches.
Eleanor Stanier was herself a keen pianist, who continued to take lessons to the end of her life. It was typical of her positive nature that she needed to perform as well as listen. She also sang in the choir of St Michael’s Church in Barnes.
While not a strong believer, she held to Christianity, albeit inclined to think that the Almighty was performing his function rather badly and could do with some advice.
Certainly her energy and application never failed, in or out of politics. She served on the boards of the Orange Tree Theatre, the Museum of Richmond, the Richmond Housing Partnership and the Richmond Music Trust. At various times she was chair of the Barnes and Mortlake History Society; a trustee of the Richmond Housing Partnership; and a governor of East Sheen Primary School and Christ’s Hospital school in Horsham. In the late 1970s she was a strong supporter of the newly created Shene School, now Richmond Park Academy.
Her successful efforts to save a wartime bomb shelter in St Leonard’s Court – thanks to her it is now listed by English Heritage – inspired her to become an expert on former bomb sites in Richmond. She enjoyed leading school parties to inspect what was left.
While Eleanor Stanier escaped Covid, she developed a rare condition called temporal arteritis, which causes severe headaches. She had scarcely recovered when she was afflicted by cancer.
In the wake of her diagnosis, her husband Tom was laid low by a stroke. Eleanor’s care for him, in the midst of her own troubles, was a final expression of her rich and profound nature. He survives her with their three sons, Alexander, Toby and Robert.