‘She stepped up to fight injustice’
Mansfield Socialist Party members
Mansfield Socialist Party is shocked and saddened at the death of our comrade and friend, Karen Seymour, following a short illness. We will always remember her standing up for the most vulnerable in society – pensioners, disabled people, the homeless, and those on poverty-level benefits.
Karen joined the Socialist Party in 2010, furious at Labour’s massive bailout of bankers, soon followed by savage Tory/Lib-Dem coalition cuts to welfare and public services. That burning sense of injustice remained, and fuelled activity to the end of her life. Karen often said she’d wished she’d joined earlier.
Born and raised in Mansfield, her first experience of capitalist exploitation came through a dead-end Youth Training Scheme on leaving school. Several low-paid jobs followed, until she returned to education in her 40s, completing a degree.
Karen then taught IT skills to adults in the community, until funding dried up under austerity cuts. Unable to find work herself, she volunteered for Derbyshire Unemployed Workers Centres (DUWC), giving welfare advice in the ex-mining community of Shirebrook, just outside Mansfield, eventually taken on as a paid welfare rights adviser – a job she loved.
People often approached Karen when she was on Socialist Party campaign stalls, to thank her for guiding them through tortuous DWP procedures. Nothing angered her more than hearing politicians claim it was easy to get benefits.
By nature shy and quietly spoken, with a stammer, Karen bravely stepped out of her comfort zone and stood as a Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidate at general elections in 2015 and 2024, the 2023 Mansfield mayoral election, and several council elections.
She was nominated to stand in the Nottinghamshire County Council election on 1 May. That election has had to be restarted from the beginning.
She did a TV interview, and got our core programme over in the short time allowed. She was also very proud to share a public platform with former National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president Arthur Scargill, a few years ago.
As well as campaigning to build the Socialist Party, Karen volunteered at a centre for the homeless. For many years she sang in Mansfield Choral Society, music being her other great passion.
Despite her own health problems, she was involved in many local campaigns against cuts to local council and health services. She always argued hugely profitable big business and the super-rich could pay for decent living standards and public services for all, but that a socialist society was essential for this.
The outpouring of sadness alongside shock on social media from her friends and colleagues in DUWC, Unison union, and, of course, the Socialist Party, is testament to how she will be missed.
