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Back
in 1955 when Graham was elected it was a very different set-up.
To stand a chance of getting on the Parish Council you had to be
a Labour party member and you had to be voted for by party members.
So even before the Parish Council election, there was an
‘internal’ election for the 11 best candidates – 6 men and 5
women.
One
of Graham’s main interests has been in education.
In 1955 there was only one school in Crofton, the one on the High
Street, with pupils often having to use other premises – the Sunday
schools and the Parochial Hall – to accommodate the increasing
numbers.
As
the number of schools increased, Graham joined each Board of Governors,
serving on them until he had to relinquish two positions when new rules
restricted membership to two governing bodies.
He chose to stay with the
Priory
School
and the High School, being
with the former for 24 years until it closed and the latter for 36
years, half that time as Chair. Graham
is retiring as Chair of the High School Governors this summer.
In
the early 1970s Graham was instrumental in re-forming Crofton Cricket
Club after a lapse of about 10 years.
The club had been forced to disband when the farmer refused to
let them use his field. As a
governor of the High School he persuaded the school to let the Cricket
Club use their sports field. He
was also a member of the local Labour party which managed to persuade
the West Riding County Council to keep the Sidings, rather than sell it
for development, and eventually the Cricket Club got its own pitch.
Acquiring the Sidings for the use of the village, particularly
for sporting activities, brought Graham great satisfaction.
He was also pleased that, when Henry Daley was Chair of
Environmental Health, he secured funding to purchase
Coppers
Lake
as an area of parkland for the
community.
There
were two other achievements by the Parish Council that Graham remembers
with some pride and amusement. One
was the building of the first brick bus shelter in the village – in
New Crofton opposite the Slipper. There
was a Grand Opening performed by Albert Roberts, MP, who ceremoniously
cut the ribbon. More such
bus shelters were constructed by Searby’s, a local builder, and they
are still there today.
The
other achievement, of benefit to the whole village, was the change over
from gas lamps to electric street lighting.
Graham and Henry Daley went to
Leeds
to borrow the enormous sum of
£5000 to fund the project. Not
only that, but they went on to persuade developers
to include
street lights
as they
were building
the new
estate,
rather than have them added at a later stage when all the houses and
roads had been finished. Hall
Park Avenue was the first of the new estates in Crofton to be completed
in this way. The Parish
Council Association was also keen on promoting this idea as part of the
planning procedure and brought pressure to introduce it – nowadays it
is the norm.
If
there was one disappointment in the past fifty years it would have to be
the loss of the railway stations in Crofton.
On more than one occasion he has raised the suggestion of having
a new station at Santingley, even having it included in the District
Council’s Unitary Development plan.
Throughout
his career as a Parish Councillor and School Governor, he could always
rely on support from his wife, Joyce and the friendship of fellow
members, in particular Alderman Andrew Dwyer and Cllr Henry Daley.
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