My wife, Kate Hamlyn, who has died of cancer aged 60, was impossible to categorise. As an overqualified secretary, she rose to become a merchant banker, then threw it in to pursue a literary career. She was a founder member and chair of the Thanet branch of Stand Up to Ukip (Sutu), which aimed to prevent the Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s election as MP for South Thanet in the 2015 election. As a community volunteer and activist, she was in the vanguard of the renaissance of our adoptive home town, Ramsgate.

Kate was born in London, daughter of Anne (nee Carroll) and Peter Hamlyn, both teachers. The family moved to Slough, where she attended St Bernard’s Convent school before returning to London to study classics at University College.

After graduation, she took a series of jobs, including at the National Theatre box office, as a language teacher in Italy, and as a secretary at Lazard Brothers bankers. She returned to Lazards in 1987 as a financial analyst, then as a member of a team working on mergers and acquisitions. She left to take up financial journalism as a way of supporting a frustrated literary career.

Kate was the delegate for Dulwich at Labour’s 1987 national conference, and complained on the Today programme of the impracticality of women “lifting themselves up by their own bra straps”. When I met her, through the Private Eye lonely hearts column in 1991, she was leading a successful campaign to save Camberwell public baths from closure.

After our marriage, in 1993, and the birth of our two sons, she could never have been said to be inactive, although her conventional working life ended. When we moved to Ramsgate in 2003, Kate threw herself into local educational, charitable and political groups. She was on the committee to rebuild the library after an arson attack; served as a governor at St Laurence primary school; raised funds for the Ramsgate arts festival; hosted the West Cliff book group; and stood in the Thanet district council elections in 2015.

When Farage announced in 2014 that he would contest the marginal seat of South Thanet in the following year’s election, Kate was among many who saw resistance as a lost cause, but one to be pursued nevertheless as a matter of honour. The first meeting of Thanet Sutu took place in Broadstairs that November.

Despite having no “command structure”, the group was remarkably effective. Kate was a superb cook and during the campaign would give homemade cakes to Ukip activists while reasoning with them. But Farage’s defeat was soon overshadowed by the EU referendum result. Kate was never an uncritical supporter of the EU, but she was glad to die a European.

Kate’s first marriage, to James Wilkinson, was dissolved in 1987. She is survived by me and by our sons, Ned and Finn, as well as her father, two sisters, Polly and Coellie, and two brothers, Tom and Ben.