Women like Marion are needed
IT WAS a great shock for me to learn that Marion Smith had died. She was not a young woman, but there are so many citizens of this town so much older and more decrepit than she was when her short illness took her!
It was Marion’s husband Roger who persuaded me to join the Labour Party in 1992, following a pertinent letter I had published in these pages. But Marion quickly took me under her wing, making sure I felt welcome at Party meetings at Unity House, and also at those of the thriving Labour Women’s Group. When I took my new baby daughter Sophie along to a Unity House meeting, Marion immediately secured the seat next to me, and loudly announced with glee: “I’m hoping for a cuddle!”
When I joined the list of prospective borough council candidates with intent to stand in my home ward of Outwoods, Marion persuaded me to attend a selection hustings for her own, more winnable, home seat, the old Woodthorpe Ward. I was selected, duly elected, and served from 1995 to 1999, when I stood down to have my second daughter, Isobel.
A few years later, I ended my membership of the Labour Party. My enlarged family made the ongoing political ambitions I had been harbouring look impractical, while Party mailshots pouring through my letterbox felt like information overload. But Marion made it her business to keep me in the fold, ensuring
I was invited to Labour Party social events, and to her legendary birthday parties which provided an additional high point between Christmas and New Year.
Always wanting to get to know this remarkable woman better, I would be sad when she pulled the plug on nice chats we were having, in order to be somewhere or do something else. But when I asked her to drive me to Loughborough Hospital for an operation, the answer was, of course, yes. One of the many things I learnt from Marion is that sometimes you have to be a bit brutal with the people who need you less, in order to be there for those who need you more.
Marion had no great political ambitions of her own; she served as a borough councillor only when she had retired from her profession, and was characteristically pragmatic when she got booted out after one term due to a national swing. But it is women like her who are needed if our politics are ever to be truly representative of our population. Sure, I didn’t become Prime Minister, but I would never have got as far as I did without her encouragement and acceptance. My thoughts are now with Roger and her four children, who have lost an exceptional wife and mother.
Ariadne Tampion, Bramcote Road, Loughborough