Tough times had impact on Will’s path in politics...
GREATER Manchester goes to the polls in its first ever mayoral election on May 4. But who exactly are the candidates standing on behalf of the main parties? Political editor JENNIFER WILLIAMS spoke to the Conservative, Lib Dem, Labour, Ukip and Green hopefuls to find out more about them. This week, the M.E.N. is bringing you an interview with each of them.
LIKE many of those standing in Greater Manchester’s first ever mayoral elections, Green Party candidate Will Patterson’s politics were forged in the stormy era of the 1980s and early 1990s.
Brought up in Coppull, just over the border of Greater Manchester between Chorley and Wigan, life was not always easy.
There were times when trying to get by was ‘pretty turbulent,’ he says, his dad – trained as a joiner – going through long periods of unemployment, his mum walking four miles to work in a call centre. But it would be his dad’s depression that would have the biggest impact. In the late 1990s he collapsed while at work, by this time at the brewers Scottish & Newcastle, and ongoing mental health problems would mean he struggled to find work through the mainstream jobs market ever again, eventually taking placements through the disability organisation Remploy – before being made redundant from that.
All that ‘unquestionably’ had a major impact on Patterson’s outlook, he admits.
“When he collapsed at work it was the week before I did my A Levels so it really influenced my growing up and politics,” he says. “Seeing mental health up close and direct experience of caring for someone with a mental health problem, it’s really close to my heart.”
Patterson didn’t initially join the Green party. His dad was a shop steward and Labour was just what people did, he says. “I did start off in Labour. I joined at 18, as you do. It’s almost the expected thing.
“On the other hand it was the height of New Labour and by the time tuition fees came up, I’d had enough and realised I’d signed up to a party I didn’t agree with.”
The Green Party was the ‘obvious’ place for him, he says, adding that he wasn’t tempted back to Labour by Jeremy Corbyn.
Now working as an IT contractor on a job in Wythenshawe, he has had long periods of unstable employment and says he worries about money even now. He admits he is comparatively fortunate, but it is those fears – and the knowledge that many others have them too – that drives him politically.
“I don’t always know if I’ve got a job to go to. I’m lucky that it’s not a zero-hours contract, but I’m still scared – how long am I going to have to have a job, how long am I going to be able to pay the rent.
“Knowing there are so many thousands of people like me in Greater Manchester – and that by a lot of standards I’m still doing okay because I’ve got guaranteed hours for so long – the fact I’m involved and can make a difference about that, meaning I can do something, is what keeps me going.
“It’s when I talk to my neighbour, who looks after her disabled husband full-time. When I talk to her – and realise I could do something for her.”