FLORIST, nurse and small business champion Pam McAlester died on February 16, aged 90.

A tireless advocate for the rights of the self-employed and small business owners, Mrs McAlester was the first female chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

Born in Cheltenham, Mrs McAlester grew up in Barbados after her father retired from the Army, attending a local girls’ school, but as a teenager she was sent back to England to attend St Margaret’s School in Bushey, Hertfordshire.

During the war years she trained as a nurse at St Bartholomew’s Teaching Hospital in London, and she went on to open a clinic back in the West Indies in British Honduras.

She left the medical profession after separating from her first husband, with whom she had twin daughters Kitty and Ione, and she opened a flower shop back in Barbados.

Mrs McAlester re-married, this time to Colonel Jock McAlester, and the pair had a son, William, and Mr McAlester’s son from a previous marriage, Charlie.

In the 1960s the family moved to Malta where she was the ladies’ tennis champion, and then to Farleigh Hungerford, near Bath, where she worked as a matron at a school for children with learning difficulties.

At this time her great love was breeding dogs, chiefly West Highland White Terriers and Long-Haired Dachshunds, which she would take to shows. The McAlesters moved to Christchurch in the 1970s and took over the Copper Kettle in Barrack Road, but they had to move on after Mr McAlester suffered severe injuries in a car crash.

His wife opened Orchard Florist in Pound Lane with her daughter Ione, and the business moved to Bargates and later to the Hampshire Centre.

The pair then opened Southbourne Pet and Garden Centre.

Mrs McAlester joined the FSB in 1975, shortly after it was formed, and she served as chairman of the Christchurch branch, national councillor, secretary and later chairman of the Wessex branch, and she was elected as national vice-chairman in 1993 on a record majority vote. In 1995 she was elected as the national chairman, the first woman to head up a national business representative group.

A strong-willed woman, she was a strong advocate of limited government intervention in the economy, the free market and individual liberty, and during the 1980s she served as chairman of the Conservative Party’s Christchurch branch, and even stood as a candidate.

She was a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher, whom she described as ‘the greatest Prime Minister since Churchill’.

In 2002, she left the Conservatives and three years later joined UKIP, later serving as chairman of the Bournemouth West branch.

She was also chairman of the Wessex branch of The Freedom Association, a centre-right campaign group.

Outside politics and business she listed her hobbies as dogs, sport, good food and reading. A funeral service will be held at Bournemouth Crematorium today at 1.30pm.