Political View: It was an honour to serve alongside Alan

Much has been said about Alan's rich and fulfilling life but I only really came to know him personally when I had the honour of serving with him as deputy mayor. I had been Lib Dem group leader and had very limited involvement in the work of the Mayor. But in 2022, Alan asked me personally to serve with him as deputy mayor and I was able to take early retirement from my job to give me the time needed to devote to mayoral work.

Serving with Alan in a mayoral team which also included my deputy mayoress, Bella Satlmarsh, and Alan's mayoress, Shabina Quayyum, turned out to be one of the most fulfilling and rewarding experiences of my life. In particular I learned a lot from Alan and from others about the role of mayor and that helped me immensely when I was elected as mayor myself the following year. Alan gave me lots of opportunities to deputise for him when he was double booked or unable to attend a community event for some reason. One senior Tory councillor once said he thought Alan was "Peterborough's worst mayor ever." I would refute that absolutely and I think history may well show that Alan to be one of the better mayors to serve as first citizen of our great City.

The role of Mayor has several main components. The Mayor chairs the Full Council meetings and needs to show fairness and impartiality, he or she goes out to represent the Council at events in communities across the City, they participate in various big ceremonial events (such as Remembrance Sunday) and they hold events to raise money for one or more charities of their choice. Alan had served as a councillor over many decades and had a wealth of work experience outside the Council. He took office as mayor at the tail end of the Covid Pandemic and he decided he wanted to do the role of Mayor in a different way. Although he was the oldest city councillor, he wanted to modernise the role of mayor and make it more relevant to a vibrant modern city like Peterborough.

His socialist convictions gave him a passion for helping people suffering poverty and hunger and he was particularly concerned about older people suffering social isolation in rural areas. So, rather than nominating charities to raise money for, he donated all of his mayoral allowance to create a fund which was used to set up breakfast clubs in a number of local primary schools . Other money came in from fundraising events and donations and this was given out in small amounts to a variety of local good causes, including local foodbanks.

He decided not to have a grand Mayor's Finale Ball but instead held a more informal event with a much lower admission price to make it more inclusive. He arranged a coffee morning at the Town Hall for people from some country villages who were campaigning to get their bus service restored and he was able to put them in touch with the then Metro Mayor of Cambridgeshire, Nik Johnson, who eventually did help them get a new bus service, which is now proving a great success.

Like me, Alan was a republican, wanting to see the monarchy replaced by an elected head of state. He caused controversy when he refused to wear the 18th Century style Tricorn Mayor's hat at the Proclamation Ceremony for King Charles. People thought he was making a political point but he wasn't; he was simply arguing that the Mayor hardly ever wears the hat and that he felt it was outdated and unnecessary. Years earlier Alan had become the first councillor to refuse to wear robes at council meetings and now no councillor does, not even the Mayor. I was never asked to wear the mayoral hat during the year that I was mayor and I only wore the frilly white collar and cuffs on a few big ceremonial occasions.

Alan's stance caused anger among some of the older councillors and in particular the Tory ones. Subsequently, as chair of the Council's constitution committee, I had to sit through endless hours of meetings, debating what the mayor should wear on every conceivable occasion. I think Alan did try to push boundaries and challenge how things were done but it's also worth noting that in his year as Mayor, he presided over events for the late Queen's platinum jubilee, her funeral and the subsequent accession and coronation of her successor.

What this all shows is that Alan knew how to challenge what he felt need challenging but also had immense respect for conserving the role of Mayor and its authority and traditions. As someone in nature conservation once said to me, "conservation" is about keeping the best aspects of something but enabling it to evolve and develop; "preservation" is about preventing any change like when you are making a pot of strawberry jam!

So I am immensely sad to lose my friend Alan Dowson and his death is a great loss to our City. He was devoted to his wife, Annie, and caring for her through a long illness was the main reason he came to the role of mayor so late in life. But we should all be grateful for the work that he did so diligently during his year of office as our mayor.