Getting deeply involved in Huntingdonshire District Council and local matters as the duly-elected local councillor.
Getting deeply involved in Huntingdonshire District Council and local matters as the duly-elected local councillor.

A mixed month of weather but a great election victory for me, an equally enjoyable birthday party for Debbie, and then time catching up with personal and family matters and getting deeply involved in Huntingdonshire District Council and local matters as the duly-elected local councillor. There were many meetings and events that were soon taking up my time and work on electors’ issues but there was still time for family outings and events as well as a little time for The Lady, cleaning it off and painting the cabin roof. The domestic economy has been deteriorating, Thatcher is dividing her party on exchange rate policy and the Poll Tax and she suffers House of Lords defeats on academic freedom and ending Local Authority control of schools. ,  Swiss companies take over Rowntree chocolate makers and industrial strife as continued at P&O Ferries, and the media are crying ‘foul’ for press freedom as they become subject to a court order to hand over tapes of the Wapping demonstrations. Roy Jenkins leads a House of Lords rebellion over academic freedom in universities, and there was also a defeat for the government in the House of Lords over the Education Reform Bill that would allow schools to opt out of Local Authority Control. The IRA has extended its campaign against UK serviceman into Germany and England’s football hooliganism is still preventing European games for our teams. The P&O Ferries dispute dominated the domestic industrial news this month and a propaganda war develops as other P&O ferries and ports are drawn into the strike. ACAS talks start and then fail talks, lorry drivers then blockade Dover and Calais and Sealink offers to take back half of the sacked P&O strikers with P&O Ferries emerging as the problem.  News of a serious engine room fire in the, Seafreight Freeway, which killed one officer and critically injured another raises doubts about the standards of safety on board the cross channel ferries. There are big strikes and demonstrations for reform in Poland and East/West arms summit is struggling on but the US Senate is now backing the nuclear arms treaty and the USSR Presidium has ratified it. The Lebanon is another flashpoint; with both Syria and Israel sending in troops and there is more fighting there between rival Muslim groups, supported by Iran and Syria. Iraqi attacks the world’s biggest supertanker in the Gulf. President, Francois Mitterrand, is re-elected and Ms Michel Rocard, the socialist, is duly announced as the new Prime Minister of France

This was a very variable month of weather; mainly warm, showery and unsettled weather more symptomatic of April, but there was also some torrential rain with local roads flooding but, when the sun came out it was very hot with  sunny days and a strengthening breeze and I worried about radiation after hearing stories of the ozone layer of the atmosphere lessening. The month saw my spectacular election victory, then the mad scramble to get myself acknowledged in the politics at Pathfinder House, an effort to catch up on my paperwork (deserted for a month) and then get back to my history writing again. I could return to my History of Little Paxton for the first time in ages reviewing the St Neots Paper Mill archive about the building of Riversfield House and welcoming my photos back from Colin Howard at last which started a large archiving process for these and my press cuttings. Then, with the gardener having a week’s holiday, I was mowing the lawns as well and playing mole catcher to boot! I was constantly attending the games lawn and swimming pool, just about coping with all this and keeping on Daniel back about revising for his imminent GCSE exams. We enjoyed our family breakfasts, and supervising Daniel’s revision and preparation for his first GCSE French oral exam and then his Additional Maths GCE participation whilst he was also helping at the local Oxfam shop. There were games of croquet with Daniel, and visits to local chandleries, and I was taking Debbie to her horse-riding, sometimes with Amy law in tow. Apart from the girl’s coughs and colds, we are all well. My cracked ribs are healing more day by day; and Di is back on her diet again. After the worry of the election and Debbie's party, we now know even more local people because of all this. Mums & Dad are okay, and they visited us during the month.  No word from Freda and Alf and we do not even ask after them these days, although we have just given Mum & Dad a parcel of gifts to take down to them. There was Debbie’s birthday party on a blissfully warm and dry day, collecting the Bouncy Castle from Biggeswade and erecting it with John Law and then rushing off to St Ives for a Town Crier interview and back for a St Neots Riverside Restaurant lunch before the 25 party guests arrived at 3pm which I videoed and this was all typical of the life I was then bound to lead.

There was the outing to Bedford to join the church service for Diana’s brother Charles and his wife Chris who had arranged the christening of their baby Natalie in a Greek Orthodox service at a Ukrainian Church! The whole thing was quite unintelligible for non-Greek speakers, but we were there… We enjoyed The Rev Peter Lewis’s family service at St James’s Church and the Priory Park fête and fun run despite the wet and drizzly Bank Holiday weather, but we had chosen a sunny and warm day for a trip to Wickstead Park and for a trip to St Ives to enjoy the St Ivo Centre swimming pool before an open-air snack at The Town Quay. There was a visit to see Kimbolton castle to show Debbie and to see some medieval instruments played My other priorities were cleaning my two cars, controlling the new invasion of moles, clearing up my office, maintaining my journal and I was then able to start work on the Lady and even found time to watch Wimbledon beat Liverpool to win the FA Cup final! To prepare for election day, I had valeted my Range Rover, serviced my Reliant and was driving the latter to check my election boards and take the girls to the playing field. I still took time off to collect The Laws and take the 42mi road journey via St Neots in the Reliant to the Rushden Historical Vehicle Rally where ‘Percy’ attracted lots of interest both parked up and, in the parade, There then followed the final canvassing for my election and preparation for polling day which all went to plan as my chest injury healed. Prior to Polling Day, we set up my office as the Committee Room with the poll computer and delivered our final reminder leaflets. Then on Election Day itself, there followed a full day and night delivering early morning ‘Please vote Today’ slips, knocking up supporters and telling (collecting their numbers at the polling stations) and returning to ‘knock-up’ our supporters who had not yet voted. We were attending the count and noting my famous victory emerging (by 1141 to 434) and then publicising my victory to the press and with election results pasted upon supporters’ flag-boards. In due curse, In the aftermath, I was basking in the warm sunny weather celebrating the success of my election campaign as I took a walk around the village and accepted the many and varied expressions of joy and congratulation. The local news full of my successful election and congratulations from the Constituency leader. There then began several press interviews in person and by radio live but my victory is the only one for my party on the Huntingdonshire District Council and nationally we just polled 20%. Then slowly collecting half a dozen flag boards around the village and chatting to the house owners. I then had to take the election flagboards back to Robin Mathew and chatted to him about election tactics for I did well but other results were mixed. My post-election involvement in local politics was quite sudden and remarkable. It began with printing out over 20 letters of thanks to those who helped in my campaign and then dropping in on Vera Ruff and organising some flowers for Edie Smith, now critical in Hinchingbrooke hospital. I further resolved to get the History published whilst ‘my old ladies’ were still around. My neighbour Marilyn McGowan is having to leave David according to Chris James opposite, which is sad. I hosted a visit from Labour councillor Mark Slater to start coordinating our opposition tactics; I met the HDC Chief Executive and District Administrator to secure the right to get all committee papers and agendas when I discovered that a new standing order proposal would restrict the rights of minority members and so I was advised to use the system whilst it lasted. I had to study the copious rules and documentation. This lead to me researching matters ahead of my first Environmental Services Committee meeting in June. It was not all elections and local politics, I attended a London meeting of Fountain Forestry at Queen Anne Street for which the journey went well until I ran into the Muslim feast day at the Regents Park Temple. There was much talk there of the new budget changes that will affect forestry in the flow country and I got quite hot driving home as the Rolls-Royce Corniche air-conditioning was not working. I have a lot of moves planned that will lead to improvements in the locality and help the SLD in the County Council elections next May. This despite news that David Steel will not stand for SLD leadership, and Cyril Smith is to retire at the next election due to ill-health. There were meetings galore: with the Priory Doom committee planning project with Mike Pope and Fiona,  a St Neots Museum committee meeting, time at Glisson Road with John Matthewman for my election return, to St Neots for a district meeting, time then with the independent district councillor, with Bertie James, prior to my first Huntingdonshire District Council meeting where the committee selections were being made and was quite relieved to get places on the environmental services and economic development committees during a very ceremonial and choreographed annual meeting. I addressed a Huntingdon SLD meeting which went well as I implored them to go away and find candidates and circulate leaflets ready for next year’s elections. I was visiting my new constituents in Southoe and then Southoe parish council meeting where the chairman had failed to turn up, I attended an evening village meeting in Diddington, then our own village hall for my first Little Paxton Parish Council meeting where I was co-opted on to the Council and got support for wanting a village policeman but less so about the football pitch. I was getting my first ‘celebrity’ invitations: for judging the Little Paxton Cub Scout annual kite flying contest this month and from Southoe PCC invite me to open their church fete in July. There was lots of letter writing day and work progressing the issues that had been raised with me in my election campaign.  There were a few ‘quick gains’ and achievements to celebrate; the British Telecom manhole cover had been repaired in Paxton and another of my initial triumphs was to get BT to repair the Southoe Public Call box. Other problems and local elector’s grievances proved to be more deeply-seated and would take time., including grass cutting as a prime example. This all lead to the need to start files for my District Council business. 20 new Cambridgeshire police are approved arousing some hope for my village policeman bid. I sat-in on an HDC Planning Committee meeting which dragged on and approved re-development of Huntingdon Bridge Boatyard despite local councillors objecting. There were then some evenings on my FOCUS newsletter with Mike Pope detailing our activities and progress before rushing over 48-hr notice questions to Pathfinder House for the forthcoming HDC Council meeting I then had to spend a whole day struggling with my resumption of financial transactions and administration after my time away and an afternoon of visits to banks and my accountant and then more account reconciliation and then working my way through my mail, dealing with other ward issues and more council correspondence and dropping copies off to local Parish council clerks.  Then some time persuading local Cub leaders to try finding a volunteer for an urgent Little Paxton group. Nationally, the economy is looking a bit dicier, with inflationary worries and a widening balance of payments deficit. The UK stock exchange fell over financial policy worries upon news of Chancellor Lawson’s interest rate cut and, even though unemployment in Britain has dropped below 2 ½ million for the first time, I feel sure it cannot be too long before the shutters go up and the stock market has its long-awaited second down turn. Politically, Mrs Thatcher is faring a bit worse and the Labour opposition are proving more effective of late. Everywhere there is more violence, self-perpetuation and greed and I think society needs a far more social and moral basis than this ‘Market Economy’, but it is not going to come from this Prime Minister. The House of Lords is attacking Thatcher’s Poll Tax plans and Chancellor Lawson’s US comments triggered sharp falls in the world’s stock exchanges as Tory divisions over exchange rate policy persist. Thatcher’s tour of Scotland ran into opposition but she was eventually allowed to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland but the Scottish Kirk Assembly would not be inviting her back next year! A broadcasting commission will now oversee British television at Tory behest, Thatcher was lecturing Tory ladies in Methodist terms as we heard that the government allowed the Nestles takeover of Rowntree to proceed which their Swiss hosts would have not allowed if the tables were reversed and Rowntree is now being pursued by Suchard as well. The media are crying ‘foul’ for press freedom as they become subject to a court order to hand over tapes of the Wapping demonstrations. The first P&O Ferries dispute dominated the domestic industrial news this month and a propaganda war develops as other P&O ferries and ports are drawn into the strike. The ferry war goes on, despite the NUS’s funds sequestrated with the sailors fighting on regardless with leader Sam McCluskie defiant. ACAS talks start and then fail talks, lorry drivers then blockade Dover and Calais and Sealink offers to take back half of the sacked P&O strikers with P&O Ferries emerging as the problem.  News of a serious engine room fire in the Sealink freight ferry, Seafreight Freeway, which killed one officer and critically injured another raises doubts about the standards of safety on board the cross channel ferries. Roy Jenkins leads a House of Lords rebellion over academic freedom in universities, and there was also a defeat for the government in the House of Lords over the Education Reform Bill that would allow schools to opt out of Local Authority Control. The RAF are on the receiving end of Thatchers war with the IRA. Two RAF men are killed in Holland by the IRA when a car bomb was followed-up by a shooting in retaliation for their three volunteers being executed in Gibraltar and a further IRA car bomb is discovered in a British base in West Germany. The news is full of the IRA security scares, and there was more sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, but the latest Belfast explosion was from a gas leak and an RAF pilot was killed at an air display near Coventry when his Gloster Meteor, the last remaining RAF version of this vintage plane, crashed into a field. Another incident of English football hooliganism sees 200 arrested and with it hopes ended of getting English teams back into European club competitions, there was violence at the Chelsea vs Middlesbrough league playoff final, with Chelsea youths disappointed with their relegation to Division II and the and 30 right wing British skinheads are arrested in France after attacks on black people. In other news, Kim Philby, the Russian spy, the ‘third man’ in the Burgess and Maclean’ case dies this month, Russell Harty is fighting for his life after he emerges from a coma but is fatally ill with Hepatitis liver disease, three BBC broadcasting House staff are infected with  Legionnaires’ disease and they are removing the infected cooling tower and pregnant mothers will now be tested for the AIDS virus. A 13 year old schoolgirl from Newark, Donna Smith, has been found dead in undergrowth and three potholers die in a rock fall. Russia have started leaving Afghanistan, and the US claim the Russians have had a missile factory explosion and Mikhail Gorbachev, points out the turmoil that his new more liberal policies are causing at all levels of Soviet society. This East/West arms summit is more symbolic than anything else and could easily change but the US Senate is now backing the nuclear arms treaty and the USSR Presidium has ratified it. Gorbachev is reforming his party and clearing up Moscow prior to the Reagan summit, Western Envoys attended the Red Square May-Day parade and the theme was Perestroika & Glasnost. The East West arms limitation talks have started at summit levels in Russia, but could yet stall There is increasing unrest in Poland, as the Solidarity movement leaders are arrested and the strike of the 3000 Lenin Shipyard workers in Gdansk continues in support of the 8 day Krakow steelworker’s strike, patrolled by Polish riot police following the arrest of Solidarity leaders and their activists carried banners in Poland and were molested by security police. The Lebanon is another flashpoint; Syria sends 7,000 troops into Southern Beirut Syrian searching for Western Hostages and a gun battle in South Beirut with 65 dead but there was no news of Terry Waite and John McCarthy, the missing Britons, even though three French hostages are released. French and Israeli jets strike the Lebanon again as Israeli troops make a large sweep in southern Lebanon for Palestinian guerrillas but nd there is more fighting there between rival Muslim groups, supported by Iran and Syria. This as devastating car bomb explosion takes place in Beirut, killing 15 people and injuring many more. Iraqi attacks the world’s biggest supertanker in the Gulf. is wrecking the ship with 50 seamen missing. In other news, a new Air Traffic Control strike affects Manchester flights to France, a British relief agency couple and their children die in a Sudan bombing incident, there is a change of guard in Hungarian political leadership and a Dutch cargo ship carrying dangerous chemicals has sunk in the North Sea after a collision