Tessa Jowell used her last months to help and campaign for others. For anyone who knew her, it was no surprise

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When I was selected as the Labour parliamentary candidate for Dulwich and West Norwood in 2014 – Tessa Jowell had announced that would stand down after 23 years in parliament – there were four words that came to everyone’s lips across the whole constituency: “big shoes to fill”.

And they certainly were. Tessa had been both an outstanding constituency MP and one of the highest profile cabinet members of the Labour government.

Across a multitude of different roles, from backbencher to secretary of state, there were a series of themes that ran through her work. Tessa had a strong sense of compassion, a desire for justice and the ability to make deep empathetic connections with people. She had recently described to me how, as a newly qualified social worker in Lambeth, she became obsessed with trying to understand how best to support and empower very young mothers, who were often living in challenging circumstances, to give their children the best chance in life. It was this passion for early years’ intervention and education that ultimately led Tessa to establish Sure Start, a programme which has transformed hundreds of thousands of lives across the country and which is a part of her extraordinary legacy.

Tessa campaigned relentlessly for the causes she believed in, and she was deeply committed to delivering real change. One constituent who I met on the doorstep in 2015 and who was not a Labour voter said, “Tessa always understood the things that brought people together.”

Before she was elected to parliament, King’s College Hospital in my constituency was in crisis with many patients experiencing long waits on trolleys in A&E. Tessa embarked on a regular series of visits to A&E to document the numbers of patients waiting on trolleys in a campaign she called “Casualty Watch”. She used the data she gathered to relentlessly lobby the then secretary of state for health, Virginia Bottomley, and the campaign made a substantial contribution to significant reform of health services in London.

Tessa also recounted a meeting with the then Labour education minister Andrew Adonis about a proposal to build a new school in Brixton – one of five new schools which Tessa saw delivered in Dulwich and West Norwood during her 23-year tenure as MP. She told me that she was determined not to leave his office until the funding for the new school – now the Evelyn Grace secondary school – had been committed; and, of course, eventually it was.

Tessa was a visionary, who saw how things could be – no better demonstrated than in her work on the London 2012 Olympics. Tessa saw how the Olympics might be not only a profile-raising vanity project for London, but the vehicle for delivering transformative investment into the poorest parts of the city, and a glorious and authentic celebration of London and Londoners in all their diversity.

It was this clarity of vision that enabled her to persuade former prime minister Tony Blair to bid for the Olympics. Her vision remained steadfast throughout the bidding process and subsequent five-year delivery period, running through every aspect of the delivery, from the design of the Olympic Park as a public space to the commissioning of Danny Boyle to direct the spectacular opening ceremony and the unprecedented role played by volunteers from across London’s diverse communities.

Tessa was unfailingly generous with her time and energy, her praise and encouragement. She supported and mentored countless women, in Dulwich and West Norwood as well as in Labour politics. Politics can be a ruthless and competitive business, but I heard Tessa say on several occasions that “there is enough success for everyone”, and that characterised her approach: if women support each other and build each other up, everyone wins.

It has been no surprise to anyone who worked with Tessa that during the last year of her life, as she faced such a difficult and bleak diagnosis, she chose to use that experience to campaign to help others. No surprise, but remarkable nevertheless, and extremely brave.

The commitment and internal steel that helped Tessa to secure five new secondary schools in Dulwich and West Norwood, create Sure Start centres across the country and help orchestrate the London 2012 Olympics enabled her to bolster the profile of brain tumour research, raise enormous sums of money and secure new commitments from the government to advance treatment options and adaptive trials.

It has been heartbreaking to watch Tessa decline over the past few months, but inspiring and humbling to see her spirit and essence remain to the very last. I last saw Tessa in the Commons last month when she attended the debate on cancer treatments led by Sarah Jones. By then, Tessa’s speech was greatly affected by her tumour. After the debate, she spoke at a reception held in her honour – among the words she could still find were “determined”, “love” and “lucky” – fitting for a woman whose love and determination led her to deliver so much change for the better, and who has left so many of us feeling lucky to have had the privilege of knowing her.

Helen Hayes is Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood