My friend Joan Hooker, who has died aged 87, began her working life at 17, when she joined the Free French in De Gaulle's London headquarters, starting a lifetime of political involvement.
At the end of the second world war she became secretary to John Freeman, who had been elected to the 1945 parliament and was minister at the War Office. Here, at 21, one of a tiny nucleus of active Labour secretaries, she was instrumental in establishing a branch of the Clerical & Administrative Workers Union for parliamentary staff (working unsocial hours, for inadequate pay, in haphazard conditions – the Commons still a bomb crater). One early task was to meet the serjeant at arms with concerns that rebuilding plans for the House included provision for 40 secretaries, not the 300-plus who existed, and who had not been consulted about the rebuild.
This early union activity continued with Joan's subsequent career as a teacher-trainer, when she became the first woman elected to the national executive of the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions (ATTI, later Natfhe). Later on, she thoroughly enjoyed her time as a mayoral consort in Islington.
Joan was a pioneer in so many ways, once telling me that her daughter Helen's birth in 1958 – not an easy time to be a single mother – was "the best thing that ever happened to her", and she combined motherhood and career with tremendous organisation, hard work and panache.
In retirement, exasperated with party politics, she turned her considerable energies to the voluntary sector, becoming chair of the Dulwich branch of Save the Children, in south London, and chair of the local Townswomen's Guild, also keeping active with the Fabian Society.
She was kind, clever, deceptively funny, and told the best stories – about everything from a stylish hat recently bought from John Lewis, to riveting political intrigue, from the last month or the last century. She had a real gift for warm, supportive female friendships: I knew Joan through my aunt Jo, their friendship forged as fellow secretaries in parliament; Joan's friendship with Nancy Bouvier was even longer, from their Free French days to Nancy's death in 2009.
Joan, well-organised to the last, arranged her own funeral a couple of days before her death, and on the day she died was still working on the Guardian cryptic crossword. She is survived by her daughter, Helen, her grandson, Will, and her sister, Sheila.