Moira Mooney with granddaughter Ella

MUCH-LOVED and respected community activist Moira Mooney had always been feisty.

From the day she walked up to a school bully in her home city of Glasgow and stood up to her for picking on a classmate with mental disabilities, Moira – who has died at 82 – was never afraid to challenge inequality.

The daughter of May and John Mulligan, her father died while on service for the navy in the Second World War. Moira was just one.

His death had a massive impact on her life. She lamented never having any siblings or having the chance to get to know him, but it also left her mother struggling to get by and she was forced to take on a job working on the buses cleaning.

Her mother later developed mesothelioma as a result of cleaning the bus brakes – which contained asbestos – and died at 67.

Despite bosses knowing it was dangerous, they continued to use asbestos and never offered compensation to the generation of women who died.

This early experience of tragedy gave Moira the drive to fight for others: she joined the Clydeside Action on Asbestos, while after moving to Islington, she became a central figure at the Blackstock Advice Centre in Finsbury Park. She was a member of the Labour Party and Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn gave a reading at her funeral on Monday at Islington Crematorium.

Moira with husband Tommy

She was also key in setting up a youth club and affordable playscheme in Highbury Quadrant in the 1980s. Acts of kindness marked her life, said her daughter Suzanne, recalling how people from all over would show up needing help and would end up staying for months and even years.

Moira met her husband Tommy at the Gresham Dance Hall in Holloway Road after he impressed her with his jive dancing. In 1971 they married at Finsbury Town Hall. Their daughters Suzanne, 49, and Linda, 46, came along and the family settled in Highbury, living in Birchmore Walk until just before Tommy’s death in 2008, when they moved to nearby Wyatt Road.

Suzanne described how the family home was known as the “Highbury Hotel” due to the sheer number of people there at any one time, including up to 17 of Tommy’s friends who would stay every year that Liverpool got through to a cup final in the 1980s, sleeping in the bath and the garden as well as anywhere else there was space.

“It was like the Tardis,” joked Suzanne.

Regulars for most of their lives at the Bank of Friendship in Blackstock Road, a bench with a dedication to the couple was unveiled at her wake to remember their long patronage and ties with the community there.

Bench dedicated to the couple

All the family were Arsenal season ticket holders and were completely dedicated to the dramas at Highbury. Tommy worked on the turnstiles there on Saturdays while Suzanne got married on the pitch.

After Tommy’s death Moira began to spend more time in the local cafes in and around Blackstock Road and was distinctive for her chain smoking and her dogs, Toffee and Ollie.

“She was a very social person. She had a very deep booming voice, she was very recognisable and distinctive.

“She was not a shrinking violet, so people would go to her when they needed help. She was very well known,” said Suzanne.

“If she were still here, my mum would be fighting right now for the cost of living campaign, [and] she’d be fighting for the No4 bus. She was formidable, fearless, kind and funny.

“She wasn’t a celebrity but she seems to have had a big impact on the wider community.”