Tributes paid to Green Party pioneer John Marjoram after his death aged 86
John Marjoram was elected in 1986, a year after the Green Party had been formed, and was a councillor at town and district level for 35 years until he stepped down in 2021.
Mr Marjoram, from Stroud in Gloucestershire, died on Saturday after a long illness. He held the record as the longest continuously serving Green Party councillor.
An environmentalist, Quaker and pacifist, Mr Marjoram was a co-founder of the Stroud Green Party in 1985 and was elected to the district council the following year.
As well as district councillor, Mr Marjoram was elected to the town council when it was formed in 1990, before becoming the UK's first Green Party mayor.
He grew up in rural Essex and developed an early interest in politics during dinner table debates with his staunch Labour father and Conservative-voting mother.
When he was called up for national service he cited his pacifist beliefs, and remained in an administrative role while others in his intake went to Malaysia to fight the Communists.
In 1968 he moved to Stroud with his young family, drawn there by his affiliation with the Quakers, who had a strong presence in the town.
Catherine Braun, Green Party councillor and leader of Stroud District Council, said: 'It was John who persuaded me to stand as a paper candidate, before I was eventually elected to Stroud District Council.
'He was such an influential and inspirational activist, not just to us here in Stroud district but across the whole Green movement. He will be much missed.'
Martin Baxendale, a district councillor in Stroud, said: 'John's first election leaflet for Stroud District Council in the 1980s inspired me.
'I read it, phoned him, and within half an hour he was on my doorstep talking me into joining the Green Party and standing for election to work alongside him.'
Jonathan Edmunds added: 'John was an amazing man who inspired so many people into the Green Party and peace movement.
'A real maverick, they certainly don't make them like John any more.
'He was so passionate about politics but also cared deeply for all people and the planet.
'Stroud will be a lot quieter without him but he has certainly left a great legacy and it is for all of us to continue his work.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
42 minutes ago
- The National
BBC bosses draw up plans to win trust of Reform UK voters
Minutes from a meeting of the broadcaster's editorial guidelines and standards committee from March show that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter "story selection" and "other types of output, such as drama" to win the trust of Reform voters. The minutes, which were reported by The Byline Times, also show the committee identified "the importance of local BBC teams" to their plan to win over supporters of Nigel Farage. There is reportedly a belief that the coporation's news and drama output is creating "low trust issues" with Farage backers. The minutes states: "The CEO, News and Current Affairs provided the Committee with a presentation on plans to address low trust issues with Reform voters. READ MORE: Richard Murphy: What to expect from Rachel Reeves's spending review "The committee discussed the presentation. Committee members recognised the importance of local BBC teams in the plan, given their closeness to audiences. "Directors discussed how story selection and other types of output, such as drama, also had a role to play. An update on progress would return to a future meeting." The committee includes former GB News executive Robbie Gibb, who is also a former director of communications at Number 10 and an outspoken Brexiteer. Gibb was appointed to the board by former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021. He was identified by former BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis in 2022 as an 'active agent of the Conservative party'. Farage has repeatedly used his own GB News platform to attack the BBC, calling it a 'political actor' and threatening to boycott the corporation. In language also used by the BBC Editorial Committee, the Reform leader suggested that BBC editors were using 'story selection' in order to target his party. In an incident last year, Farage refused to appear on the BBC until the broadcaster apologised for allowing members of the public to ask him questions during a special episode of Question Time. READ MORE: UK sends spy plane over Gaza as Madleen threatened by Israel Byline Times said BBC staffers it spoke to are concerned about the plan to win over Reform voters, due to the risk of increasing allegations of bias. The BBC has previously been criticised by some viewers for heavily featuring Reform UK politicians on its programmes, despite the party only having a handful of MPs. In July last year, sociology professor Tom Mills – author of The BBC: The Myth of a Public Service – claimed the BBC were giving such a platform to Farage because they are such a big part of a 'political establishment which has drifted to the right'. 'I think the simple answer to why they [the BBC] like Nigel Farage is they are much more comfortable with an anti-establishment figure on the right than the left. It's as simple as that," he said. 'He's on their political spectrum and the political spectrum for the BBC runs from the centrists out to Nigel Farage. 'They still see those guys [like Farage] as being rogue figures of the establishment, but they are just given legitimacy by the fact that there's lots of voices they [the BBC] see to be legitimate in these media organisations which speak from a similar sort of perspective.' The BBC has been approached for comment.
Spectator
4 hours ago
- Spectator
The battle of the Channel has been fought
Kemi Badenoch says the Conservative party will take a look at withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), freeing us at a leap and a bound from the tyranny of human rights lawyers. The Tory leader would give Britain the power to deter the cross-Channel influx of asylum seekers, by withdrawing protections from those arriving in Britain without papers. As there is unlikely to be a Conservative government in the foreseeable future, this announcement it's going to have no effect now, or any time soon, on the actual boats. And read the fine print: Badenoch hasn't really even made up her mind; she is going to set up a committee to look into it. In the real world, the boats aren't being stopped, the gangs aren't being smashed and the French judges and police are shrugging.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Mothin Ali challenges Greens' ‘middle class' image as he enters deputy race
A Green councillor who intervened to stop rioters and received death threats for vocal support for Gaza is running to replace Zack Polanski as deputy leader of the party. Mothin Ali, of Gipton and Harehills ward in Leeds – a former Labour stronghold – said he wanted to champion working-class communities, challenge the idea of the Greens as a 'middle-class party' and ensure it represents 'a diverse Britain increasingly threatened by the far right'. Ali, 43, said the support he got from voters in Gipton, 'a traditionally white working-class community', as well as diverse Harehills, reflected unifying concerns and his commitment to all, adding: 'We're not playing identity politics games.' Launching his candidacy, Ali said: 'A lot of the problems white working-class communities face, a lot of ethnic minorities face, a lot of rural communities face. We're all faced by the cost of living; climate change is very real. 'We have to address climate change, we have to address poverty, we have to address the lack of opportunities, the access to good education, the health deserts where people can't get a dentist appointment, these are not ethnic minority problems. These are not working-class problems. These are problems that are structural in our society. 'We have to take care of every single person – if that means the rich have to pay a little bit more, absolutely right.' Ali, who organised the City of Belonging event in Leeds after rioting broke out in Harehills in July 2024, said he wanted to spread the 'grassroots community organising' he had done in the city across the UK to build a 'people-powered movement'. 'We've got to keep organising our communities, regardless of whether they're black, brown, Muslim, Jewish or Christian – the common problems that we face, we face together,' he added. Ali said the 'Overton window shifting more to the right' was creating a 'climate of fear' among his constituents in a poor area where people 'look out for one another'. In July last year Ali was falsely accused of rioting in Harehills by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, after he intervened to stop arson and violence. Ali said he had 'no regrets' about vocal support for Gaza in the local election victory speech in May last year, which led to him getting threats, but said he should have been 'more considered' in language he used on X after 7 October, later apologising. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion An accountant, YouTuber and permaculture teacher, Ali is the third candidate to announce their bid for the Greens' deputy leadership, after Antoinette Fernandez and Thomas Daw. The party's current deputy leader, Zack Polanski, is running for the leadership. The Green party of England and Wales, with 859 councillors and four MPs, is positioning itself as the 'antidote' to Nigel Farage's Reform UK, which has 824 councillors and five MPs across England, Wales and Scotland. The Greens' vote share among people aged 18 to 24 in the 2024 general election was 19%, second to Labour and ahead of Reform on 8%, while their general election vote share among minority ethnic voters rose by 9%.
