At tonight’s (Wednesday) extraordinary full council meeting, members will be considering granting Freedom of the Isle of Wight to former WWII pilot, Mary Ellis (follow our live coverage from 5pm).
Next month Mary turns 101 years old and it’ll also be the anniversary of a campaign launched by OnTheWight for this inspirational woman to be honoured with Freedom of the Isle of Wight.
Great news!
Mary was granted the Freedom of the Isle of Wight!
The campaign was sparked by an email from Anne Grant (of the brilliant Solentaviatrix Website) who’d had a letter published in the County Press the previous year that led nowhere. OnTheWight agreed to help out and launched a petition as well as opening up dialogue with the Isle of Wight council (IWC).
Busy behind the scenes
It was all looking very positive until an email arrived in November 2017 from the Head of Legal Services, Helen Miles, advising that the IWC would not be able to consider Freedom of the Wight for Mary because:
“Unfortunately whilst Mary Ellis clearly is a remarkable woman, the Freedom is very much about honouring persons of distinction who have in the opinion of the council, rendered eminent services to the Isle of Wight.
“In considering this matter we are not of the view that Mary Ellis meets this criteria, although clearly she has led an amazing life.”
Request to postpone news report
We then wrote to Cllr Clare Mosdell (Mary’s god-daughter) to let her that we’d be running an article highlighting the council’s decision.
Cllr Mosdell asked us to delay publishing the story, as Mary was grieving the loss of her ‘Spitfire Sister’, Joy Lofthouse, who’d passed away just a few days beforehand.
We also informed Anne Grant, who said she’d been seeking help from Leader of the Isle of Wight council, Cllr Dave Stewart, on the issue.
Very welcome u-turn
The next morning the IWC press office called and asked us to hold off from publishing for a few hours because they were preparing a statement for us to “help get the story right”.
It was confusing given the email from the Head of Legal and absolutely no indication by the head of the press office of the planned u-turn, but just a few hours later, the IWC published an article to their Website (not issued as a press release as is the usual practice) revealing that an application to consider granting Freedom of the Wight to Mary Ellis would be going to full council early 2018.
Hurrah!
Voting tonight
It’s fantastic that the Isle of Wight council decided at the last minute to change their minds about Mary’s case.
Isle of Wight Councillors will tonight (Wednesday) vote on whether to grant that Freedom. Follow our live coverage from 5pm.
Who is Mary Ellis?
The WWII pilot, who had her first flying lesson in August 1938 and later trained to fly fighters and bombers, notched up an impressive record of aircraft flown, over 400 Spitfires and Seafires across the Solent during the second world war delivering planes to the RAF.
Mary contributed not only to keeping the Isle of Wight safe, but also keeping the country safe during WWII and over recent years has brought much positive press attention to the Isle of Wight.
Image: © Cam-ARA
