I failed to
be selected in the new Deptford ward, which was set up following the recent review
carried out by the Boundary Commission.
This means that my 24 year stint as a Member of Lewisham Council will
come to an end on election day, May 5th. If I were to have the opportunity to make a
valedictory speech and chose to take advantage of it, it would have probably
gone something like this, after stripping out the usual niceties that are
obligatory on such occasions:
Having
failed to be selected by the Labour Party to contest next month’s Local Council
elections in Lewisham, my political career will therefore shortly be coming to
an end. Over the past month or so I have
thought about my 24 years on the Council and the manner of my departure. I would like to offer a few of these
reflections now.
I feel some
gratitude to the Labour Party Members of Deptford ward. By choosing not to select me to be one of
their candidates they have given me a gift.
They have removed the burden of public office from my shoulders. I have not had to decide to lay it down. My conscience is clear. Perhaps you have to have been a Councillor
for some time to fully appreciate and have sympathy for what I say. During my time on the Council, the role of
Councillor has become far more demanding and the process of selection far more
competitive. It is difficult to excel
and be seen to do so in this environment when you see the holding of public
office as something of a sacrifice, especially when you are up against people
who view it as a cherished ambition, if not something akin to drawing first
prize in the lottery of life.
‘Salus
Populi Suprema Lex’
This is the
motto of Lewisham Council which roughly translates as ‘the welfare of the
people is the highest law’. I have
always taken this to mean ‘put the people first’. I have tried in my time on the Council to
make this my guiding principle. To me,
everything else was of secondary importance.
Some people
over the years and especially in the last few weeks, have privately said to me
that I have the reputation of always speaking the truth as I saw it and doing
it with unremitting frankness. I am not
entirely sure if they feel this is something to be praised or pitied. To the extent that this is true, how can I
explain myself? Do I suffer from some
kind of illness? Perhaps. Do I come from a long line, on both sides of
my family, of working class, contrary, perverse, Mavericks who could not ever
encounter any authority without wanting to kick against it? Absolutely.
The Bible
says that the truth will set us free.
Lying, deceit, double dealing and trying to be all things to all people,
by contrast, poisons the heart, binds the spirit and troubles the mind.
So, if I
told the truth as I saw it or told a truth that I thought needed to be said and
if I did it at times and in circumstances when wiser and better people would have had
more sense, and if I did it with scant regard to the personal consequences, then
I did it because I wanted to be free.
My father,
sadly now dead for some years, was a Christian leader all his adult life. As I get older, I realise that he has been my
guiding star. He used to have his own
benediction which he would often perform at the end of church services. He would raise up both his arms as he stood
in front of the congregation and he would simply say with a big smile on his
face, ‘We wish you all every blessing’.
What I understood him to mean by that was that ‘We’, the church, wish to
one another and to our friends and family, to our neighbours and our
communities and to the whole world, every good thing that life has to offer.
Peace, joy, wealth (but not too much!), health and good fellowship. But above all, love. Love in your life that is pressed down and running
over. So much love that you can’t hold
on to it all, so it flows out of you and enriches the lives of others and makes
the world a better place.
I am not a preacher. I went into politics as I didn’t feel that I was a patch on my father. But as I get ready to take my leave from this particular stage as the curtain falls, I wish to say to the Mayor, to the Cabinet, to fellow scrutiny Councillors, to Officers of the Council, to all residents of our borough, to friend and foe alike, ‘I wish you all every blessing’.