FORMER Kent county councillor and life-long campaigner Laurence Shirley has died at the age of 67 from cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.

Mr Shirley was sub-postmaster at Bridge, near Canterbury, for 32 years until he retired in 1998, having taken over from his father.

He engrossed himself in village life and became chairman of its village hall committee and was elected onto the old Bridge-Blean Rural District Council. He then joined Canterbury council and was the first chairman of the city's Oxfam group.

In 1960 Mr Shirley, who was born in Bournemouth, went to India to start the building of a hospice for Leonard Cheshire in the foothills of the Himalayas. After finishing his voluntary work in India he went to Australia and travelled home on a cargo passenger ship. During the nine-week voyage he met and became engaged to his wife, Ann.

Back in England he continued building work in Cambridgeshire where he and his wife had two sons, John and Nicholas, before moving to Bridge in 1966 to take over the sub-post office.

Mr Shirley was elected as Conservative member of Kent County Council and became involved in many campaigns and chaired several committees, including one which was responsible for negotiations between local and gipsy communities. He was also a member of the joint Kent and Essex committee for the Dartford Tunnel.

Throughout his years in the sub-post office he never lost his building skills and with his sons converted the derelict Great Pett Oast into two homes for them and their families. He also had a great passion for traditional jazz.

He was a volunteer driver for Kent Ambulance Service and a voluntary escort driver for the county council's social services. He joined Canterbury Victim Support group and at the time of his death was chairman of the Canterbury branch of the Council for the Protection of Rural England.

A New Orleans-style cortege will leave on foot on Sunday (February 2) at 1.30pm from Dering Road for the funeral service at St Peter's Church, Bridge. Afterwards everyone is welcome to join the cortege for burial at Patrixbourne Church, followed by a reception in the Plough & Harrow pub, Bridge.

The family has requested no flowers and has asked for donations, preferably with gift aid declaration, to the Ryder-Cheshire Foundation, 82 Queen's Road, Brighton, BN1 3XE to be transmitted to Raphael, Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Mr Shirley's son, Nicholas, said his father always favoured the underdog so that those who could only sign an X for their pension or UB40 were not humiliated.

"Every customer who stepped into the post office and approached the counter was given recognition, a joke, a kind word and a question about their health and recent activities," he said.