Una Kroll, who has died, inspired the virtues of compassion, service and dignity in how she practised the principles of loving ones enemy and peace with justice. At 89, when I first met her, she still had courage, wit and feistiness from the top of her head to the soles in her feet.
To all those she struggled for and with, you wanted Una on your side.
Una was a prime mover in helping create and deliver our NHS, she fought for women’s rights her entire life including helping change the church’s sometimes blood boiling outlook on equality with her tireless campaigning for women priests.
She fought apartheid, long before others joined this fight.
Una was a doctor, a priest, a feminist, a troublemaker for goodness, an impatient improver of lives and living, and an agitator to those who defended the status quo. In her radical campaigning she shows us the total necessity that; it is action and power, guided by principle, not principles alone, that are the forces for change and the power for good.
Life gives you extraordinary moments and in Una it gives us one of our most extraordinary human beings. I am proud to have known her and to have campaigned alongside her.
Let us hope that in death, a reflection of her life can give us new resolution to all be a lot more like Una.
James Frith
Labour Party Campaigner
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