Before the founding of the UK NHS, she said, "Families were forced to choose between buying medicine for their children or a loaf of bread... We must never ever go back to those days.

Bower was born in 1905 in Dalston, East London, when King Edward VII was the monarch and women were not given the right to vote in general elections.

As a Labour party member, Bower participated in the 1926 General Strike and the Battle of Cable Street in 1936.

She was 108 when she died, two months after giving a speech at the 2013 Labour Party Conference campaigning for peace and equal rights.

[4] Bower lived in a Highgate residential home and died at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.