Flick Rea was known for lighting up the council chamber with her speeches

SHE was known as the best mayor we never had and the ‘Queen of West Hampstead’, a unique character who knew the Town Hall inside out – but more importantly understood the people of Camden too.

Alderman Flick Rea, who has died this weekend aged 88, had served as a Liberal Democrat for 35 years, loyal and resilient through the party’s highs and lows.

Her passing was announced by her son, the journalist Robert Rea, who described her as “one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever known, an amazing mother with a fierce loyalty and love for her family, and someone who created a deep affection among her many friends and those who knew her.”

Alderman Rea’s unscripted contributions in the council chamber were legendary, both witty and waspish – helped perhaps by her training as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).

Often she would lay on unexpected history lessons for younger councillors, and tease those that were using the role as a stepping stone for greater ambitions.

And the public loved her for her sense of rebellion, particularly in the north west of the borough where she enjoyed a significant personal vote in her Fortune Green ward.

Amid the national coalition government, the Lib Dems fell to their lowest ebb when losing all of their seats bar one in 2014, but she was the one. Labour could never dislodge Alderman Rea – who was always undefeated at the ballot box.

In more successful times, when the party was Camden’s largest in 2006, she took on the culture and leisure brief and was instrumental in pushing through the restoration and refurbishment of the Prince of Wales Baths – the Kentish Town Sports Centre. The swimming pool, which had been starting to literally crumble from the roof, had previously been deemed too expensive to save.

At that time, she passed up on the chance to become the Mayor of Camden – a role which many felt she would be perfect for after her years of civic duty. While the Lib Dems had shared the role with Labour in opposition, the same favour was not granted when the tables turned.

She was awarded an MBE for her services and many of Alderman Rea’s Labour counterparts, however, did recognise how much she meant to so many borough residents, and so in 2024 she was made the first Liberal Democrat Alderman of the borough. It is a special honour, like ‘freedom of the borough’, which unlike other councils Camden reserves for rare circumstances.

This ensures her name will be etched in marble at the Town Hall for ever, and the presentation was a special evening when political rivalries were set aside in tribute to her achievements.

Wearing the same pink jacket she had worn to her first council meeting, she said that night: “I started in political life really quite late really. I wasn’t politically active at all until my 40s and I sort of became a liberal by mistake. I didn’t like anybody else, but I suddenly thought, oh, there’s this rather jolly little group of people. I quite like them.

“And then it turned out they actually needed me. They ran a perfectly dreadful Christmas bazaar and I thought, well, I can do it better than that. The next thing is I was chair of the local party before we knew where we were. When I got elected four years later it was quite a surprise and I don’t think I realised quite how much I wanted to do the job or how much it was the thing I was meant to be doing.”

Former Lib Dem council leader Keith Moffitt once said: “I think one of the happiest days of my life was when we got Flick elected in 1986 after it had taken so much work. The centre of the universe in Camden for Liberal Democrats for so long was Flick’s kitchen table, and many memorable conversations took place there, not just Liberal Democrat ones but personal ones as well, and I count her as one of my very dearest friends.”

It was not just political fund-raisers that she helped organise. She would always remind the New Journal that the popular Jester Festival was coming up every summer in West Hampstead and be part of the coordination.

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