The first woman and the first Jew to be elected Mayor of Aberconwy in North Wales in 1978, Vicki Lazar, who has died aged 92, will be remembered for her charity work.
She always believed in women’s independence, and her lifelong involvement with charities began with the Llandudno Ladies’ Circle, which she helped establish, and on which she once served as secretary. Her growing charitable work, alongside her husband Joe, who owned a successful department store in Llandudno, made them respected figures in the town.
As a couple, they were heavily involved in local Jewish life, with Joe serving as secretary to the Llandudno Hebrew Congregation, and Vicki in the unofficial role of synagogue receptionist and telephone operator. She was persuaded to stand as an independent candidate for Llandudno Urban District Council in a 1968 by-election. Her success soon brought her to prominence as a leading member of the Housing Committee.
Following local government re-organisation in 1974, she was elected to the new Aberconwy Borough Council and was the prime mover in establishing the Borough’s first sheltered housing scheme.
In 1977, she served as deputy mayor and met the Queen and Prince Phillip when they visited Llandudno. The following year she became mayor and met Margaret Thatcher and also Jim Callaghan, the then Prime Minister.
As the first woman in the role she was sometimes accidentally referred to as ‘Mr Maer (Mr Mayor)’ by locals. Although not a Welsh speaker, Vicki supported the language and helped secure the translation of the Aberconwy Coat of Arms from Latin to Welsh. She once joked that councillors appreciated having a Jewish mayor because it meant not having Civic Sunday services.
The eldest child of Scottish parents Tom and Tilly Livingstone, Vicki was born in Denmark Hill, London, but moved at the age of three to Glasgow with her family, where her father was offered a job and she was raised in the Pollokshields area, attending the local synagogue.
Despite being raised in England, she always considered herself a Scot and recalled her Jewish upbringing as ‘mixed’—kosher and community focused, but not particularly religious.
Her parents wanted her to go to university but the Second World War ruled out Higher Education for Vicki and others of her generation. She served as a volunteer in the Glasgow Ambulance service and did a secretarial course, later working as P.A. to her father.
In 1946, aged 19, she met Joe Lazar, then a warrant officer in the RAF, at a family wedding in Manchester. They married in Glasgow in 1950 and settled in Joe’s home town of Llandudno in North Wales where his mother ran a kosher guesthouse and he had a small drapery and credit business—‘Lazars of Llandudno’— with his brother Sydney. During the 1950s and ‘60s, the business expanded with Joe becoming sole owner. The company owned a large department store in Llandudno and a credit business throughout North Wales.
Vicki retired from local government in 1983 and following her husband’s sudden death in 1985, she moved to London to be near her children and settled in North Finchley, doing voluntary work for Jewish Care and the Woodside Park Synagogue branch of JACS. As a result the synagogue made her Woman of the Year for 1997.
She once said she’d had three lives— in Glasgow, Llandudno and finally London— and that living away from Wales, she’d occasionally felt the hiraeth (a Welsh concept of longing for home). She would proudly display small Welsh and Scottish flags at her London home.
Vicki Lazar is survived by her three children, Michael, Terence and Marcia.
Michael Lazar and Cai Parry-Jones
Vicki Lazar: born December 20, 1926. Died October 20, 2019
