THE death of long time Monmouth resident Tom Moran MBE has been announced following a short illness. Tom died on Monday 5th October at The Royal Gwent Hospital, Newport, 10 days after being transferred there from Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny.

Tom is remembered not only as a World War Two veteran, a long term member of the Labour Party, a member of the Royal British Legion and Monmouth Royal Engineers Association but also as a champion for pensioners’ rights, locally and nationally. He was awarded the MBE for services to older people in Wales in the Queen’s Birthday honours list in 2010.

Born in 1922, Tom was the son of a First World War hero who had received the Military Cross. Tom’s parents were publicans in Huddersfield, and Tom was born in their pub, the White Lion hotel. Tom attended the local grammar school and had begun training to be an architect when the Second World War started in 1939. He joined the Royal Engineers in 1941 and was posted to serve in India in 1942.

He was commissioned and transferred to the Royal Indian Engineers in 1943, and saw active service in the Far East, fighting alongside the Ghurkas whose bravery, he claimed, saved his life on at least two occasions. He was to have a lifelong association with the Ghurka Regiment, actively supporting their claim for pension rights and residency, as well as carrying out charity work on their behalf.

He served in India, Burma and Malaya until 1946 and was then posted to the British Army of The Rhine where he met and married Patsy (known as Shem), then serving as a civilian telephone exchange supervisor with the Allied Army of Occupation in Germany. They returned to his native Huddersfield in 1947 and Tom resumed his architect’s training, going on to become Estates Manager for Whitaker’s Brewery in Halifax, where he was to remain for almost 20 years.

Tom and Shem had four children, Andrew, Anna, Tessa and Fiona. Tom went on to work in the Planning Office of Kirklees Council, retiring in 1987. From 1990 to 1993 he chaired Huddersfield Cancer Support before moving to Monmouth in 1994. It was here that he joined the local branch of the Royal British Legion and Monmouth Royal Engineers Association. He was to become an active member, attending numerous Remembrance Day parades in Monmouth, until as recently as 2013. On these occasions he often delivered the Kohima Epitaph at the end of the ceremony.

Events at an RBL Queen’s Birthday celebration in 1996 were to lead to Tom’s campaigning for pensioners’ rights. Noticing that a number of elderly people were unable to afford to buy a drink at the bar of his RBL branch to toast the Queen, he was prompted both to pay for the round of drinks and to start the Monmouthshire Pensioners Forum, campaigning for better pensions and care for the elderly. In 1997 he was elected to the Wales Pensioners Forum, affiliates of the National Pensioners’ Convention and he went on to become its General Secretary for four years.

Thus, in his late 70s he began a new career, travelling the length and breadth of Wales and beyond, campaigning and lobbying national and regional governments for a better deal for pensioners. In 2004, aged 82, he was appointed member of the National Pensioners’ Forum for Older People, acting as adviser on older people’s issues to the Welsh Assembly Government. He resigned from this post in 2013, aged 91.

A service of celebration of his life will be held at the Forest of Dean Crematorium at 12.30pm on Wednesday 21st October. No flowers, by family request, but donations to the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal or the Gurkha Welfare Trust. Details will be available shortly from Ernest Heal and Sons, Funeral Directors.