It as at the start of the “Summer of Love” in 1967 that The Beatles released their album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to great acclaim.
Former Newcastle city council leader Tony Flynn says: “A month earlier, 22-year-old Jeremy Beecham was elected a councillor for Benwell, one of the poorest areas in Newcastle’s West End, without any such fanfare.”
The two events fix the flavour of the time. The album was a music milestone, and the young Oxford University graduate with a first class degree in law began the task of bettering life for people in his deprived ward.
Read more: North East leaders fear rail downgrade
This year Jeremy Beecham, who lives in Gosforth, reached his own personal milestone, retiring after 55 years of representing Benwell. Seventeen of those years were spent as leader of the city council – the longest occupant of the post in Newcastle’s history.
It is a journey which saw him knighted, awarded an honorary doctorate by Newcastle University, made a Freeman of the city and later elevated to the House of Lords as Lord Beecham of Benwell. He stepped down last year.
It was also a career which had started with the former Newcastle Royal Grammar School pupil joining the Labour Party at the age of 15, becoming secretary of Oxford University Labour Club, and later chairman of the Local Government Association, Labour’s national executive committee and the Labour Party Conference. Tony Flynn, who followed Sir Jeremy as city council leader for 10 years, says: “For many years Jeremy received national acclaim as the foremost local government spokesperson in the country.”
Now a book has been published which explores and celebrates Sir Jeremy’s place in North East and national life, with 21 contributors filling the pages with their observations. Sir Jeremy’s son and daughter, Richard and Sara, speak of “a man passionate about social justice and utterly devoted to serving the city he loves.
“We grew up in a household where Dad’s love for Newcastle, for Benwell and for the Labour Party was in the very air we breathed. We have many happy childhood memories related to Newcastle politics. Dad driving around Benwell on local election days while we handed out Labour stickers through the car windows ad took turns on the tannoy.”
It was the same for Sir Jeremy as a boy. In an interview with researcher Judith Green, who has a long association with Benwell, he recalls: “My father was always a Labour supporter. My first political memory was in the 1951 election when I was six, and the radio giving the status of the parties. I was genetically affiliated to the Labour Party from the very beginning.”
One of the problems facing a place like Benwell was slum housing. “It was apparent from the age of 15 to me that things in Newcastle would have to change. Too many people were living in dire conditions. I felt drawn into trying to promote the changes that would help transform people’s lives. That’s what good government should be about.”
Four years in charge of social services gave him an opportunity. “We went from a welfare rights service to a huge increase in home help, housebuilding, investment in schools,. It was massive change. It improved people’s life chances.”
During the 1970s, the Priority Area Project was set up, which targeted deprived areas of the city, providing funding and a dedicated officer for each. On the role of local government, Sir Jeremy told Judith Green: “It’s about trying to promote a better society, a more equal society, at a local level as part of what should be a national approach to the issue.
“It’s promoting equality, as far as you can do it, and that includes things like endeavouring to support the local economy as well as directly providing services. That’s got to be the core of what local government is about.”
The editor of the book is Jon Gower Davies, former head of the Religious Studies Department at Newcastle University and a city councillor for 20 years. Newcastle, he says, “owes much” to Jeremy Beecham, “There were many changes going on in the city and many derived from Jeremy’s initiatives.
“Yet there is nothing in the city which asks you to recognise him, apart from a modest cul-de-sac in his electoral ward, a room in a local library and a wooden bench dedicated to his beloved wife Brenda in a small public space.”
This may be, says Jon, because to an extent Sir Jeremy did not seek personal recognition.
“Perhaps this explains why so often in the many books which have been written about Newcastle and Tyneside, he is barely visible. What we tend to find in these books is a recurring promotion of a much earlier and very different local politician – T Dan Smith.”
Under Smith’s time as council leader, says Jon Davies, “there were those who felt that Newcastle had become the empire on which the concrete never set.” Another of the contributors is Peter Morris, who as municipal reporter for the Evening Chronicle, covered local government extensively. “This was a time of intense debate over the future development of the city,” he says.
The Tories won control of Newcastle in 1967, the year Sir Jeremy became a councillor – “reminding us today of what a different period that was, as does the thought of the Tories controlling Newcastle, where no Conservative has won a seat on the council since 1992.”
He points out that Sir Jeremy was still at Oxford “when Dan Smith was drawing up and starting to implement his modernist plans for Newcastle.- all tower blocks, offices, motorways, and raised walkways to separate vehicles from pedestrians.”
Peter says: “The impression that Beecham gave and which is preserved in my memory to this day is of a politician more interested in public services for the people than in the grand plans of the type championed by Dan Smith.”
He remembers covering the opening of Eldon Square shopping centre in 1976 and on the same day reporting a survey which showed that 20% of Newcastle households were living at or below the poverty line.
“This conjunction of events made a persuasive case for Beecham’s focus on services for the deprived rather than those grand schemes, though reason tells us that shopping centres are needed too, though not necessarily the one that had required the demolition of so much of Georgian Newcastle to make way for it.”
His verdict on Jeremy Beecham: “I believe he was a sincere fighter for the most deprived.”
Peter, who had conducted an interview with the up and coming Beecham in 1973, says: “He stuck to the principles he outlined to me in 1973 to focus on public services, particularly social services., rather than involve himself in the major redevelopment schemes that were turning Newcastle upside down at the time. It is thanks in large part to Beecham that Newcastle came through a period of disruptive physical redevelopment and political and financial turmoil to emerge as the city we see today.
“But it is a sad irony that many of the social problems that were his main focus in Benwell and other inner city areas are still with us.”
- Jeremy Beecham: A Quiet Altruist. edited by Jon Gower Davies, Ergo Press, £7.99. Available from shoptwmuseums.co.uk or writeoneditng@yahoo.com
READ NEXT:
- Union claims 'white elephant' Gateshead Stadium should be in closure mix with other leisure centres
- Newcastle Clean Air Zone: Cash grants of up to £16,000 to help drivers dodge pollution tolls
- Anger over Tyne Tunnel toll hike – 'We keep putting the burden on people who cannot afford it'
- Tyne and Wear Metro's £2 ticket fare cap approved – but only for passengers with a Pop smartcard
- Abandoned plans to open new pop-up Stack in Newcastle 'ignored' neighbouring hotel and school
