Lives Remembered - Julie Cockburn
My very good friend, Julie Cockburn sadly died Friday evening, 29 November 2024 after a long, crippling illness.
We first met in the late 1960s, and were then involved in the heady politics of 1970s London such as squatting, claimants' union, campaigning against Internment in Northern Ireland, alternative forms of childcare and generally trying to change the world.
On 30 July 1972, Julie was in Derry for the demonstration which led to Bloody Sunday. The next day, she was back in London, Stoke Newington Magistrates Court accused, with me and Jenny F, of political graffiti.
At the packed magistrates court, Julie stood up, powerful and resolute, and announced we were having a minute's silence for the 13 innocent people murdered by the British army the previous day in Derry. The flustered magistrates adjourned the court and the public gallery cheered. We had our minute's silence. We were cleared on appeal.
Our wonderful daughters were born a few days apart in the summer of 1974 and still remain friends, as 50 year olds!
In late 1974, I drove her and Mike from our Hackney squat to start life in Hebden Bridge. Six months later, I followed. Living in the iconic Queens Terrace squat, we were part of the 'hippie' invasion which began to change Hebden Bridge in the 1970s. (Julie helped organise the Exhibition: How the Hippies Changed Hebden Bridge.)
She met my late partner Elaine Connell before I did, at their women's group, and was always a close friend of hers too, especially during Elaine's illness. (Listen to Julie interview Elaine here.)
Julie was a strong, remarkable woman who touched the lives of so many. There will be many stories, perhaps about her feminism, her carpentry, rebuilding the Trades Club, her love of history and the countryside, her glass blowing and bee-keeping, her house in France, her Anglo-Indian heritage, her daughters and grandchildren or her steadfast support for friends and family.
Chris Ratcliffe
Friday 6 December 2024
From Chris Barnett
Monday 9 December 2024
I met Julie around 2017 when we were both involved with Wainsgate Chapel.
My fondest memory of her is from 2018: I had arranged to give her a lift to a meeting at Birchcliffe, but when I picked her up from Wadsworth Community Centre she was still eating her lunch - unfazed, she jumped in the car with a bowl of apple crumble and custard and polished it off as we drove down the hill.
She will be greatly missed by all of us at Wainsgate. Her ashes will be interred in the graveyard in the new year, and there will be a memorial / celebration of her life at Wainsgate in the spring.
From Julian Harber
Friday 13 December 2024
I first met Julie Cockburn in 1969 or 1970 when I was visiting friends at Essex University. She had arrived at the university as a the girl friend of a newly arrived first year student who had moved into the Colchester collective household I used to live in. She was, if I remember, a former secretary and had little or no interest in politics.
That soon changed and after involvement in various radical campaigns she decamped with other comrades in London where she was involved in squatting, Claimants' Unions and the Stoke Newington 8 Defence group.
As Chris says in his contribution above, she arrived in Hebden Bridge in late 1974. Around this time in Britain various feminists had founded a women in manual trades campaign. It is likely that this inspired Julie who had no academic qualifications to train as a carpenter and joiner to decide to enrol on a course in the building department of Bradford College (then run by Bradford Local Education Authority)
However when she presented herself at the college she was told she couldn't enrol because the course was only open to men.
"Oh yes I can" Julie said and produced a copy of the newly passed Sex Discrimination Act a1975 drawing their attention to those sections which stated it was unlawful for any LEA or education institution to discriminate against a women seeking access to any training course
Julie was then duly enrolled as the first female student on the course and eventually became fully qualified.
Sometime after that, she qualified as a teacher. It was this that led me as a Workers' Educational Association organiser to recruit her to become a tutor on a Helping in Schools accredited Open College course for voluntary helpers in Primary Schools.
From Lucy Baker
Monday 9 December 2024
The thing is, it is not surprising Julie was pretty fed up when I was born. After all she had been the only little girl in the family for 4 years and then this pesky little sister arrived. Having a big sister means there is always someone to tell you what to do, even if you don't want telling.
My best friend Prue and I spent our time trying to get involved with whatever complex games Julie and her best friend, Ann Thorp, were doing. We were chased away a lot. Our childhood at Orchard House in Camberley was mainly out of doors. We had a big garden with endless space for camps etc. The next generation, our own children, enjoyed it just as much.
Family holidays were generally aimed at somewhere our Dad, Hugh, could go fishing. We went to Ireland and Wales a lot. Our Mum did not get much of a holiday but we went walking, swimming and sailing.
My life and Julie's took very different paths but we could always meet up and reconnect with each other. I am going to miss her telling me what to do!
Her little sister Lucy
From Chris Dellen
Thursday 2 January 2025
Shortly after I moved to Hebden Bridge in 1980, I met Julie in the women's group I joined. A few days later I bumped into her in the launderette. While we chatted I told her that my house had more than enough space for myself and my three children and I'd be looking for a lodger. Julie mentioned that she was in the process of splitting up from her partner and that he'd need somewhere to live.
Soon afterwards I started a job at Community Action Team (C.A.T.) and one of my colleagues, Mike, introduced himself as Julie's ex and asked about my spare room. For the next two years Mike lived in my attic and Kala and Jennie joined the household for about half the week.
In the early years in Hebden Julie was a very significant person in my life and I got to know her well. During the 1980s and early 90s we were in a women's consciousness-raising group that met weekly, sharing, in confidence, much about our lives. At her funeral we heard many stories and tributes about her strength, independence, creativity, courage, bravery and kindness. She was certainly a strong personality with strong ideals and convictions and I think I was in awe of her. It was inevitable that others, even dear friends, might not always agree with or live up to Julie's standards, and perhaps this is why some referred to falling-out with her at times. I didn't fall-out with Julie but, on occasion, could definitely feel exasperated.
In spite of all this Julie was also very down-to-earth and ordinary. Her kindness was not the fleeting, patronising or performative sort, it was born of her commitment to a better, fairer, more equal and more loving society. It was about creating that society now by acting it, and sharing what you had, rather than waiting for the revolution.
During the 90s and noughties I didn't see so much of Julie. Our interests, preoccupations, work and relationships had shifted but we didn't lose touch. When I was living in Walsden, with my partner John, Julie would drop in after a visit to Gordon Riggs, sometimes bringing her grandson. John had not known Julie the young mother but soon bonded with Julie the grandmother over gardening, nature, social and political history, cats and train sets.
When Julie moved out of her house in Old Town John helped with clearing stuff out, visits to the tip and moving things up to Kala's. Julie was hindered at this time by a shoulder injury she'd sustained in a fall: the beginning of the Parkinson's, though we didn't know it then.
In recent years we lived closer to each other again and our relationship was built around the practicalities of living such as taking Ruby for a walk, swapping plants and helping out with the garden, sharing marmalade recipes, defrosting the freezer, dropping in for a cuppa - just ordinary friendship that I'll always remember with great fondness.
From Peter Rowlands
Thursday 9 January 2025
Sometime in the convoluted history of our house on Burlees Lane, Julie had called it home. This before we came to Hebden Bridge. Indeed, Julie had, at some stage, built what was then the kitchen, amidst the William Morris wallpaper. Julie offered us unstinting warmth and kindness even when life for her was a little arid. From the distance that is New Zealand and over two decades of absence, Julie remains a strong thread and we're palpably saddened to learn of her dying.