My mother was an immensely adaptable person. My father had started life as a errand boy with an insurance company, gone on to start up its operation in the Caribbean, where I was born, and then done the same thing in Ethiopia in collaboration with Haile Selassie.

Unfortunately, he was an alcoholic. One day he got drunk at a banquet, which was a great insult to the emperor, and we had to leave. I was 14 then.

As my father had also started up a branch in Johannesburg, we went there. But because he was still drinking he lost that job too. There was no money, there were nights when we had nowhere to sleep and my mother, who had never worked, got a job behind the counter in Woolworth’s.

Later she became a supervisor and all the time she ran the house, took charge of everything, and kept cheerful though she was absolutely exhausted.

Johannesburg was a tremendous shock to me. I had come from a country ruled by blacks to a black nation ruled by minority of whites. Suddenly I was aware of race and all its implications and became highly politicised.

I joined Kupugani (it means “uplift yourself” in Zulu) and became regional organiser for the Cape and Namibia. We processed and redistributed the surplus food that the South African government was destroying. Fifteen per cent of black children were dying in the first year of their lives and there was 30 per cent mortality in the country areas but still the authorities poured one million gallons of milk into the sea every day to keep the prices high.

During that time I married and later separated from my first husband, Richard Turner, the philosopher. Then in 1977 I was banned, and because there were death threats against me, I fled to Britain with the two children. That year Richard asked if they could spend Christmas with him. Perhaps because the editor Donald Woods had just escaped, the authorities were afraid that he would get out as well. They decided to shoot him, at point-blank range in front of the girls.

When my older daughter phoned me, 1,000 miles away, I couldn’t think what to do. All I could think of was my mother. And I thought: “Cope with it. You just have to go on.”

I flew out and the children met me at the airport, their hair and clothes still covered in blood. And it was so terrible that at first I couldn’t think and then I just did something extremely practical. I washed them and I washed their clothes and I gave them tea.

Although I had been politicised by South Africa I didn’t join a party till I came to England. I’d gone to live in Surrey - not exactly a hotbed of socialism - and I joined the Labour party. Then in the early Eighties I organised a meeting in the town hall. And Neil, who was party spokesperson on education at that time, came along to speak.

I was enormously impressed by him, by his optimism, by this magnetic field he has around him. When he enters a room he disturbs the air. There are only two other people I have met like that - one was Margaret Thatcher and the other was Steve Biko.

I was astounded that the party didn’t train its people. Whereas in South Africa we used the few people that we’d got very effectively, when I got here I found that the Labour party didn’t give its canvassers or its candidates any training at all.

So the first thing that I did was run courses. Then I stood as a candidate, in both the 1987 and the 1992 elections.

And I remember Neil in 1992, working on the campaign, talking till he was hoarse, never giving up. In 1987 he’d made the policies. In 1992 it looked as if we could win. And then we didn’t.

As soon as we knew the results we all went to Walworth Road to wait for Neil. And as he came up the steps he said, “Stay here, I’m going to say something I want you all to hear.”

And we stood for about an hour in the cold while he wrote out his statement. And I knew that he was going to resign.

And I thought, what is the next best thing to do? Women! I can do something for women. In that election we’d upped the number of Labour women in parliament from 21 to 37. We could do more. And that was the moment when Emily’s List was born. A campaign to make 50 per cent of MPs women and to do it by raising the money to support them.

After the election we went to a party and a lot of us were completely miserable and crying and Neil came up to me and said, “come on now . . .”, and he did a little soft shoe shuffle and started to sing, “Always look on the bright side of life”.

And it reminded me so much of my mother. Just keeping on.

Barbara Follett is credited with restyling the Labour party. Emily’s List celebrated its second anniversary this week.