Summary of Interview with Paula Shaw December 2014
Paula Shaw talks about her Great Aunt Mercha (Miriam Karpowic 1896-1979), and at the end of the interview about being a Labour Councillor and joining WILPF.
Miriam Karpowic was Jewish, born at Bialystock, then in Tsarist Russia in 1896.  She trained and practiced as a biology teacher, but came to Liverpool at the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917.  She married Alex Kay, who was the first Jewish Labour Councillor in Liverpool.
Paula Shaw was born in 1953.  Her childood memories of her Great Aunt date from the late 1950s and later, when she spent summer holidays with her Great Aunt.  Great Aunt Mercha was involved at that time with WILPF, and meetings were held in her house.  She kept some WILPF materials from this time, which Paula now has, including a Liverpool WILPF Branch recipe book and copies of the WILPF Newsletter: Peace and Freedom News . She remained a WILPF member until she died.
Aunt Mercha, who would then have been Miriam Kay, was a delegate from WILPF  to a Peace Congress in Moscow in 1963.  Paula has a photograph of the Congress and her Great Aunt's notebook from which she wrote a report for the WILPF Newsletter.
When Paula's Father escaped from Bialystock in 1938 as a boy of 16, the area was in Poland and most of their relatives died in the concentration camp at Majdanek in 1943.  Great Aunt Mercha gave a home to Paula's Father who completed his education in Liverpool and later worked as a chemist at ICI.
Paula learnt from her Great Aunt (and her Father) to listen to all sides and be non-judgemental.  She has recently researched her family at the museum in Bialystock and traced and contacted  her cousins in Canada, New York and Israel through Facebook.
Paula was a Labour Councillor in the London Borough of Croydon from 1996 - 2006, becoming Deputy Leader at the end of that period.  She enjoyed 'making a difference' and casework which she described as the sort of thing her Great Aunt had been doing - helping people with their housing and other problems.
Paula joined WILPF when she retired, having looked on the internet to see whether the organisation of her Great Aunt still existed.  Since settling back in London, Paula has been volunteering for WILPF and active in campaigns, as well as maintining her involvement with her local Labour Party in Hackney and influencing their policy for peace.  She is very keen to see WILPF grow in size and influence.