Born in Paisley, to Dorothy and Jim McWattie, Sheila was a passionate and proud Scot. Attending John Neilson secondary school, Sheila excelled in English and demonstrated an obvious gift for languages, whilst her friends teased her, gently calling ‘Swottie McWattie’ but she just laughed and studied some more.
She was never a straight-laced intellectual though. As a rather rebellious teen growing up in the 1960s, she sat in cafés with friends after school, putting the world to right, and she and her dad argued endlessly about Labour Party politics. Her candlelit bedroom always echoed to the sounds of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, with a waft of incense in the air.
She worked in the field of Housing for many years in Edinburgh, London and Brighton supporting mostly single homeless women into safer, more secure accommodation, always going the extra mile, always working hard for social justice, with warmth and kindness.
When Sheila arrived in Brighton in 1996, she became a volunteer at Brighton Women’s Centre and significantly contributed to making it a safe and often creative space for women to meet. In 2000 Sheila studied journalism and it suited her activist instincts to acquire the tools to communicate effectively with the press, thus getting BWC more clearly on the map. Sheila chaired Brighton & Hove International Women’s Day (IWD) group for four years, keeping women’s issues alive and to the fore. With a committee of local women, she helped co-ordinate Pride Women’s Performance Tent, with Nicky Mitchell and Al Start, showcasing a diverse range of women performers and offering a comfortable space for women to gather on the day.
Sheila gained an MA from Sussex in Creative Writing and taught on creative writing courses, which became as much a passion for her as her journalism.
Sheila McWattie, who died suddenly and painlessly in 2015 from a brain aneurysm, was driven by her passion for people, her love of language and storytelling and her lesbian feminist politics. Following Sheila’s death, it felt absolutely fitting that the Pride Committee announced their plan to dedicate the women’s tent to her and it is now known as The Sheila McWattie Tent.
Taken from Sheila’s Obituary in G Scene; March 2015 written by Fiona Thomson.
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