Once upon a time, I actually voted Conservative.
I’d just gained the age to vote and Edward Heath seemed to be a really nice chap. He became Prime Minister on June 19th 1970, having defeated Harold Wilson nationally. However, my vote didn’t affect the local result and the incumbent, J. P. W. Mallalieu (Labour) retained his long-held seat. He had been the sitting M.P. for Huddersfield or Huddersfield East, since 1945. His role in Huddersfield has, since 1979, been taken up and maintained by Barry Sheerman, who is currently the second longest serving Member of Parliament. It is my experience that he is approachable and works hard for his constituents.
Only afterwards, during Heath’s tenure, did I really start to notice (and as I began working, after college) how little the Tory Party cared about the NHS, and how little they knew about people like me or cared about people with backgrounds unlike their own. In my mind they were the selfish party; the party that looked backwards, rather than forwards. That’s not to say that there are no decent Tories, just that they tend not to rise up and take power.
From then on, I tended to vote for whatever the Liberal Party called themselves both locally and nationally and I did so for an awful long time. I even canvassed for them once. Their policies seemed to be fair.
I’d moved out of Huddersfield by now and our local Liberal M.P. Richard Wainwright was a great chap. He worked for his community and for the people he knew from visiting local clubs end events. After him came two terms of Tory (hard to say how effective he was, we hardly saw him), three terms of Labour (which passed me by), and two terms of Tory again from 2010. In 2017 we actually elected a really great M.P. (Labour). Thelma Walker involved herself in all areas of local life and she’d even stop and chat to constituents whilst shopping in Aldi, or passing by in the street.
Sadly, she lost her seat to her predecessor, following the media fuelled public backlash against Jeremy Corbyn.
My current, Tory, MP is not seen about as often (certainly not by me) and he follows the party line pretty much all of the time. I wrote to him recently to ask if he could oppose the takeover UK doctors’ surgeries by large American corporations. The reply was a mealy-mouthed, company script that compounded the lies we see and hear about the NHS every day from his party.
I stopped voting Liberal after the 2010 election when their leader Nick Clegg got them into bed with David Cameron’s Tories. That was it for me – never again. I should have realised that it might happen as my friend Jim, now sadly departed, always used to say “scratch a Liberal-find a Tory “. At that election the liberals had their best chance of achieving many of their main aims such as free university education, and most importantly, proportional representation. Both, sadly unrealised as the party revelled in their position as Tory lapdogs.
We have local and Mayoral elections coming up this week. So now, with my hopes of a successful outcome to Brexit dashed and a raging pandemic that has given the most crooked Tory government I’ve experienced every opportunity to raid the coffers and to line their own pockets – I have the chance once again to choose who I vote for. I’d like to vote Green throughout but they have very little chance of upsetting the two-party balance. Nevertheless, Andrew Cooper has my vote, alongside Tracy Brebin. I wish either of them every success.
Saturday Walks 