She was made a member and then a fellow in 1990 of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, also being elected to the Contemporary Portrait Society, Society of Portrait Sculptors, Society of Women Artists, Society of Numismatic Artists and Designers and the Art Workers’ Guild. Finch was a silver cup winner at the International Grolla d’Oro, Venice, 1981 and 1983; was runner-up and finalist in the London Docklands Development Corporation Competition, 1988-89; and a prizewinner at the International Arts Biennale, Malta, in 1995 and 1999.A youthful passion reflected in Finch’s sculpture was a love of dance. As a schoolgirl she had studied ballet with Ada Foster, one of whose notable pupils was the actress Jean Simmons. Finch was a good dancer and went on to teach at Foster’s school. She was especially proud to be a member of the Royal Academy of Dancing. For the academy she completed a commemorative medal of Dame Margot Fonteyn and a bust of its director, John Field.Finch took part in many notable group shows, including at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, one of a number of several international public collections holding her works. In 1999, she had a solo exhibition with the Foreign Press Association.Her range of sculptural commissions and works in permanent collections was wide, including two portrait busts of former governors of the Bank of England; one of the band-leader Glenn Miller for the Corn Exchange, Bedford; the composer Sir John Tavener for the Society for the Promotion of New Music; Sam Wanamaker, its founder, for the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre; and the Trophy for Freedom of Expression Award for the Index on Censorship.

Her bronze of a mother and child will shortly be placed in Queen’s Square, near the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.The Finches’ two daughters took up art-related careers: Helen Scott-Lidgett is director of arts at Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications; and Lucie Skeaping is the musician, writer on music and broadcaster.David Buckman. Wilf Page was one of the most effective and charismatic spokesmen for the farmworkers’ cause in the post-war British labour movement. Wilfred Randal Page, trade unionist: born Catton, Norfolk 11 September 1913; married 1939 Christina Beesley (died 1997; one son, one daughter); died Cromer, Norfolk 8 April 2001.
Wilf Page was one of the most effective and charismatic spokesmen for the farmworkers’ cause in the post-war British labour movement.He was elected on to the Executive Committee of the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers in 1969 and, when it merged with the Transport and General Workers’ Union in 1982, continued to represent the interests of rural workers on the ruling body of that union until 1984 when, at the age of 70, he was obliged by rule to stand down.He became known internationally for his work on the European Federation of Agricultural Workers, and was elected its president in 1979, although he was forced by a heart attack a year later to give up the post.He represented his union on several industrial training boards and quangos, where he never failed to present a socialist viewpoint on the issues under discussion. His contributions as delegate to the annual TUC conferences were always a challenge to the establishment, particularly on such vexed issues as the tied cottage system, land nationalisation, and membership of the EEC (to which he was consistently opposed). In 1996 he was awarded the TUC Gold Medal, in recognition of his 50 years of service to the trade union movement.Wilf Page was born in 1913, the eldest of four children of a higgler (general dealer) in the village of St Faiths, near Norwich. His childhood years were a period of great poverty and unrest in the countryside. A lasting influence was his Sunday School teacher, Billy Furness, a Primitive Methodist who was one of the leaders of the 1923 farmworkers’ strike.As a schoolboy Page once led his fellow pupils out on strike in protest at the dismissal of a well-liked woman teacher for getting married.

The “stoppage” lasted for three days, ending in unconditional surrender (partly due to parental pressure), as well as a thrashing for all those who took part.Another sharp lesson came in the sacking of his grandfather, aged 62, as too old and slow to hump sacks of coal His family took him into their tiny, damp cottage. Page had to share a bed with his grandfather and one morning woke to find him dead.To keep the £25 insurance money out of the clutches of the undertaker, they buried the old man themselves very early one morning, taking the body in their pony and cart to the cemetery. When they unhitched the pony the coffin suddenly slid off the cart to leave Page’s grandfather standing on his head in the middle of the churchyard.Page left school at 13 and had a number of short-term jobs until he joined the RAF in 1932. There he witnessed for the first time racial attacks, on a fellow recruit Dan Cohen, a Jewish Communist.

It was Cohen who became Page’s tutor in Marxism; they studied covertly, usually in the lavatory, where Page would sit pamphlet in one hand, a dictionary in the other, struggling to master strange words and concepts. With no other prospects in sight, he signed for 12 years in the RAF and was trained as an aerial photographer.He was sent to India, where he was distressed and angered by the poverty, and the bland indifference of the ruling imperial ?te. Ordered to go to the aid of Czechoslovakia in 1938, his unit was stood down at the last minute after Chamberlain allowed Hitler to swallow up the nation. They returned in 1939 to Britain, where Page served throughout the war.Demobbed in 1945 and enthused by Labour’s landslide victory, he became secretary and agent to the newly elected Labour MP for North Norfolk, Edwin Gooch. Page set about the task with great gusto, cycling around the villages, calling meetings to establish Labour Party branches and consolidating the MP’s power base.By late 1947, however, a growing disillusionment with the rightwards stance of the Attlee government led Page to resign his job, and in 1950 he joined the Communist Party. After a long political gestation it was, he felt, “like coming home”.

He was soon serving on the Eastern District leadership of the party, and in 1967 was elected to the National Executive Committee for six years. He was voted on to the Erpingham District Council on a Labour ticket in 1947 and then as a Communist continued to be re-elected for another 24 years.It was a unique achievement in the heart of rural Norfolk, where he was a lone Communist at the height of the Cold War. To break down the prejudice against him as a “red” by many local union branch officials, he started a youth club which staged a series of plays in village halls. He wrote a regular column for the Eastern Daily Press, and was a frequent contributor to his union journal The Landworker. He was editor for many years of The Country Standard, which aimed to bring socialist solutions to rural problems.Page was passionately involved in the peace movement, forming a CND group in Cromer, and taking part in many anti-war demonstrations; he was arrested on one occasion at the USAF base at Sculthorpe for wire-cutting. He organised visits to the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries, as part of trade union or Communist Party delegations. In 1984 he helped initiate what is now an annual event, a trade union rally at the Burston Strike School celebrating the longest strike in history.Page was fortunate in having the support, especially in the lean early times, of his wife Christina.