Remembering Loved Ones Anne Astwood (Mckay, Payne) NLCS 1965 – 1972

remember her “glorious singing and speaking voice” and her “soaring soprano”. Anne encouraged a group of friends to sing madrigals together; a favourite was The Silver Swan by Orlando Gibbons.

Known to many friends as “Annie”, Anne died of cancer on 18 September 2022 in Australia, her home since 2000. In 2010 she was unexpectedly diagnosed with a brain tumour and the remedial surgery left her with cognitive disabilities which she fought and largely overcame. She was passionate about social justice and had always been an enthusiastic political activist; her illness only increased her commitment to the disadvantaged. Music was another passion and she sang in early music choirs until the end of her life.

At school, Anne was a bright, enthusiastic, cheerful person, full of fun and sometimes mischief – her full length coat from Biba was not regulation! She was interested in all types of music and took every opportunity to sing but was especially interested in early choral music. Friends

Whilst at Stirling University, Anne joined the Communist Party and, together with her first husband, Ian Mckay, worked in support of the miners and mining communities which were severely under threat. She lived and taught for a while in a Scottish mining town and then moved south again to teach in Waltham Forest where she was an active member of the NUT. Another member recalls that her contributions to the debates were always “thoughtful but passionately articulated”.

After emigrating, she joined the Australian Labor Party (although disappointed by the missing “u”!) Locally she began focussing on the way the party itself provided opportunities for disabled people. She subsequently became co-chair and co-convenor of the group “Labour Enabled” which seeks to promote the participation of the disabled within the party.

Anne was working for Worksafe Victoria, an organisation dedicated to reducing harm in the workplace and improving outcomes for injured workers, when her brain tumour was diagnosed. After surgery to remove the tumour, she could no longer read, write or speak as she used to and her recovery took eighteen months. In her search for a social, as opposed to a medical, model of recovery, Anne enrolled with Voice at the Table, an organisation providing practical guidance and training to enable people with cognitive disabilities to self-advocate. After she graduated Anne became a tutor and was responsible for establishing VATT’s monthly group networking meetings and was a much loved and respected advocate. Although she remembered her previous abilities, Anne never complained and said she was a happier person in the 12 years after her acquired brain injury. Although Anne never regained her ability to read music, major brain surgery did not prevent her following what she was enthusiastic about and she memorised words and music to sing with Melbourne’s Choir of Hard Knocks (for people who have experienced homelessness or disadvantage).

Anne and her second husband, Andy had a daughter, Katie who, I was told, “strongly resembles Anne.” At the celebration of Anne’s life, Katie chose to base her tribute to her mum around Anne’s favourite songs. It was a fitting memorial.

My ‘Rather Weird’ Mum

If you knew my mum, I don’t have to tell you that she was kind, passionate and sometimes fierce: she was appalled by injustice and unfairness, and she was outspoken in challenging it. She was indignant on behalf of people who are talked over, and spent much of her life working to help them be heard.

While she was generally quite able to make sure she was listened to herself, she obviously felt an affinity for people who are misunderstood and ignored. She wrote in 2004, ‘On those rare occasions when her meanings are taken amiss or not understood and an assumed smooth encounter is engulfed by mismatched expectations and negative assumptions, she can become a person incapable of communicating, of socialising, of thinking — and be strongly drawn never to expose herself to such risk again.’

That’s from ‘One That Got Away’, the book chapter where she first publicly wrote about thinking of herself as being ‘somewhere on the autistic spectrum’ — although at that time (a couple of years before I sought out a formal assessment for autism myself) she said ‘there are reasons why I do not entirely feel I deserve the accolade’, in later years she came to