“The mayoralty has invigorated our marriage”
What Steven asked Councillor Trevor Clarke, the Mayor of Medway
Councillor Trevor Clarke is the Mayor of Medway for this municipal year. Steven met him in the mayor's office to talk to him about becoming a councillor and the mayor, how his father got shot, and the end of the world...
First, a Christmas message from the Mayor:
We love Christmas in our household – not only because we are Christians so we celebrate the birth of Jesus at this time, but also because it is a season which brings out the best in people. Joy and generosity are more abundant and merriment is easier to find – in many ways it is not unlike the year-round experience of being a Mayor! I now have some inkling of what it is to be a professional Santa – dressed in ancient red robes meeting and taking photos with happy and excited families and children. I fear a beard may be all that separates me from this and a future career!
I am especially excited, then, to be taking part in all the Christmas festivities that Medway has to offer: our fabulous Dickens Festival, the enormous Christmas Market, the pantos and concerts and plays - including the amazing live performances of A Christmas Carol at Eastgate House – and of course the numerous carol services in churches, community spaces and our fantastic Rochester Cathedral. How excellent it is that so many of these events and services are dedicated to raising funds for the myriad of wonderful charities we have here in Medway.
There will be very many people who spend their Christmas caring for and serving others, either as volunteers or in employment. On our Mayoral Facebook page we have tried this year to showcase the incredible kindness given by our excellent charities and selfless carers who, on a daily basis, provide the support that is vital to the wellbeing of so many, and is the backbone of our community. If you are able to, as we enjoy this special time of the year with friends and loved ones, please do consider supporting some of them, including our own Mayoral charities Caring Hands in the Community and Slide Away: Supporting bereaved children.
Christmas is a great time to take stock, rekindle friendships, reunite families, meet neighbours – it is a unique time of the year, and it’s something we do so well in our great borough.
On behalf of the Mayoral team, the Mayoress and I would like to wish all our Medway residents and all of Local Authority’s readers (and its hard-working staff!) a very peaceful, blessed and happy Christmas, and in the inimitable words of Tiny Tim as penned by our very own Charles Dickens: ‘A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, everyone!’
And now the interview.
What is your role on Medway Council?
I am currently the Mayor of Medway for this municipal year.
What does the role entail?
It entails more than I thought it would. I've been a councillor 18 years, I have a good feeling for what the borough's about. I hadn't quite appreciated the soft power of a mayor. How you would be engaged in ordinary life that was not ward work. Because for 18 years I've looked at it through the lens of a ward councillor, which has tended to be dealing with either negative problems or struggles. You have reversed the polarity as mayor, and you're now looking at it from above. The people you're dealing with and coming to see have not come to you to solve a problem. They've come to you just to meet you, for you to encourage them, to be a part of them.
I hadn't really appreciated how much of that there would be, and also what I absolutely adore and love doing… I know that it's all cliched. We all say, “Oh, everyone's lovely.” They're not all lovely, but most of the groups I'm seeing, you recognise the sacrifice, the commitment that they make, that they're honest, decent people. Often, they have filled a gap that was there, or they have gone through some trauma themselves, and they're looking to give back. I'm not actively looking for people to support, because we're not meant to do that as mayor, but I have in a soft way. The opportunity to encourage and support the groups, to encourage them, hopefully to connect them with others doing similar things as well, has been to me an extra element to this that I wasn't perhaps overly anticipating.
Why do you feel you were selected for Mayor?
It was our group's opportunity and potentially to be the last group member that would be the mayor in the present structure. It's something that I'd always wanted to do towards the back end of my political time, but obviously, with my mobility issues and the situation, the clock is ticking quicker on that. It was a question that I asked myself. This is probably the only opportunity I will get. I don't want to do it just for me. I still had to have the vision to do it, and I did. I put myself forward to the group to do it, and in usual secret fashion, these things are resolved behind closed doors. It was done on an open, straightforward vote between two candidates, and I was pleased to say I was the successful one.
How was your wife taken to the role of Madame Mayor?
Initially, not pleased, really. She's never been a part of the political scene. She said, this was your thing, you do it, just don't bother me at home. She was a little bit upset, but I think she was quite anxious. She didn't know what the demands would be on her, really.
She's been going through some health things, and she had to stop working two years ago. She was at a stage where I think a big thing was a little bit intimidating because we didn't know, but actually she's come to really, really enjoy, not all of it, obviously, but the opportunities we have when we are with people. She's brilliant, and she's great because she's a teacher by heart. I like being with her because she's a lovely lady. We met 40 years ago. We met when we were 18.
We actually found we work incredibly well together. It's taken us 40 years of married life to find the one thing that we can do. We joke and say that we've spent so much time together, it's like we've been on a therapy course, and the mayoralty has invigorated our marriage and lives together, because we've got a common interest now that perhaps for a few years we didn't really have. She recognised the gravity and the seriousness of it, and that was what worried her about it, because again she had no background in the political, but I think that's an advantage personally for this, because it is an apolitical role.
