Frank Dobson MP, RIP

An advantage for me of staying in touch with my old home freebie the Camden New Journal is of course updating me about my old locale and the people there and getting more information about them.

Along those lines, I discover with some sadness the death of my 2010/15 MP Frank Dobson has died, but celebrate his previous existence. He became my MP by way of boundary changes in 2010. My 1992-2010 MP in Hampstead & Highgate constituency had been Glenda Jackson until boundary changes led her to contest and win the 2010 General Election by just 24 votes in the Hampstead & Kilburn seat, while my home constituency became the Holborn & St Pancras seat with Frank Dobson as MP.

(I also recall from my being in Camden Town Hall for the count on polling day at General Election 2010, that he said he loved being voted for by people he lived among. At that same count was Glenda Jackson, who had not moved from London SE3 to live in the Hampstead & Highgate constituency.)

As my MP he was much more approachable than Glenda Jackson ever had been, and I remember conversing with him sometime during the 2010/15 period as we walked through Westminster near Houses of Parliament. I can't recall what had brought us to walking together that day, and though I was a firm Green Party member at that stage and even a Spokesperson on Social Security, we spoke affably.

Later, with the help of disability activists from Women with Visible & Invisible Disabilities and Payday Men's network, I got his intervention when I had been summonsed too frequently to disability benefit assessments for Employment & Support Allowance. I was no longer bothered after that.

Frank was very much demonised by the right wing press for his insistence on not moving out of council housing in the nearly 40 years that he was an MP. While I shall let former Peace News editor Albert Beale tell more about his conversations with Frank Dobson, I shall just quote this from his tribute letter re Frank Dobson:

I remember, when he was elevated to Secretary of State for Health in the Blair government, bumping into him setting off on foot for Westminster (with his overnight red boxes of ministerial papers having been driven off in his official car without him), and him explaining that since he was in charge of health, he needed to set an example and shape up a bit…

Albert Beale pays tribute to the late Frank Dobson MP