Jacqui Gasson Cardiff legend

      Cllr. Jacqui Gasson. Cardiff Legend

I was very sad to hear of Jacqui Gasson's passing. I know that she had not been well for a long while, with many trips to Llandough Hospital. I have known her since the 1980s when I was active in the Liberal Party, part of the SDP/Liberal alliance.   I joined the Liberal party in Caerau in 1982, and was a member of the not so active Cardiff West Liberal  Association, Jacqui was a founding member of the Cardiff West SDP, and had a lot more supporters in Caerau than the Liberals did. I can't remember how we met, I don't remember campaigning for Jeffrey Thomas (former Labour MP for Abertillery)who stood in Cardiff West in the tragic 1983 election, where Cardiff turned blue with Stefan Teleszki, it was claimed that people voted for Jeff Thomas because they thought it was George Thomas that they were voting, consequently, David Seligman lost personally I don't buy that, perhaps some people might have thought, that but not enough to cause the effect, it was simply that the Labour vote was divided.

However back to Jacqui, we met and was became part of the "Caerau Contact" team, which was similar to the Liberal party's Focus leaflets, in fact, Jacqui was more of a Liberal embracing the Community Politics of Bernard Greaves, than the stuffy SDP, that tended to look down their noses at Liberals and their practices, Jacqui was active, proactive in Caerau. The Cardiff West SDP was led by Geoff and Marion Drake (Geoff was the Alliance candidate in 1987). I liked them personally, however they were right-wing old Labour, very centralising in outlook and no fans of devolution, they with the rest of the Radyr (and some of the Caerau )followed  David Owen into the so-called continuing SDP, and then I think many of them went back to New Labour. Their departure was a good thing as Geoff had editorial control over the "Contact" leaflet, and the lot of the material that was irrelevant locally, we were now going to make it relevant.

In the 1980s Jacqui was a hardened campaigner. The one that affected me was for new Tesco at Culverhouse Cross, which was opposed by local retailers who feared (understandably)for their businesses and the South Glamorgan County Council planning which opposed the development, the Welsh Office overruled them and it went ahead, providing me with a job, along with 300 others. She worked hard for the local community before she was elected. 

I was a member of the Caerau Contact Team, we met monthly at one house, and then another when she joined the Owenites after the SDP/Liberal merger, which of course became the Liberal Democratic Party we all know and love. We produced a monthly leaflet which went to most homes in Caerau. I was a leaflet coordinator for my part of Caerau, I had 4 individuals delivering leaflets, I delivered quite a few, I got up at 4 am in the morning and delivered them, sun, rain, snow. It was hard work, but as Mike German always said “you don't win where you don't work” and that is true, we had an election to fight in 1987. That year we had a general and a local (city) election. Cardiff City Council and Caerau ward, in particular, was the one we were focussing on. There were 2 seats (Like it is now), Labour of course. Cllr. Bill Carling was local retired postman, former chair of the Housing Committee and a long time veteran, Cllr David Seligman  (remember Cardiff West’s almost MP) who was not local, a Llandaff lawyer, a bit of an arrogant bugger

Party    Candidate    Votes    %    ±
Labour    W. Carling    1,633    46.9    -7.7
Labour    David Seligman *    1,502       
Alliance    Jacqui Gasson    1,914    32.6    +19.0
Alliance    J. Williams    980       
Conservative    C. Trigg    593    17.0    -7.6
Conservative    R. Trigg    587       
Green    G. Jones

Jacqui would be joined later on the with Roger Burley, and she a seat on (defunct) South Glamorgan Council, and begin the hard work of improving the community, where she would lobby to get new schools built, like Trelai Primary school, and improvements on Caerau Infants.

It was hard work but it was a hard nut to crack, but as you can see her personal following was a lot to do with it with a 19% swing equally from Labour and Conservative. The opportunity came the following year when sadly Bill Carling passed away and there was a by-election, we worked hard producing a number of leaflets, quite a bit of door-knocking, a lot of gold banners around the area, something not ever seen. Labour put up Robert Mawn, Bob was a decent man, father of David and Julie, who I was in school with. Jacqui won and became the Liberal Democratic Party’s first elected member in the UK. We were founding members of the Cardiff West Liberal Democratic Party, we founded it in the Canton Liberal Club on Cowbridge Road. 

On a personal note, I attended the Harrogate Liberal Assembly in 1987 when the Liberal Party voted to merge with SDP, which I supported and was interviewed by someone (I have forgotten who she was) from Newsnight about what I thought about the merger and I said to her “it's not the name that is important, Its Liberal values that all that mattered” that night I rushed to the hotel where I was staying to see the interview, alas, no, it was not to be. However, the interviewer sought me out and apologised to me for it not being shown, as it was pushed out by another item. The other thing that had happened was Paddy Ashdown canvassing support for a leadership challenge, and at the time David Steel was nor planning to resign, I was not pleased.

Jacqui’s work began and she worked hard all the 23 years that she served Caerau on the council, however, my time politicking was coming to an end. In 1989 there was that leadership race, the choice was between  Paddy Ashdown and Alan Beith, I supported Beith (though my preference would have been the late David Penhaligon that charismatic Cornishman whose death was tragic). Ashdown won, and I resigned from the party as I had no time for him. However, it would not have mattered as I moved to the US in 1990 and the 1990s was another world. I heard about her hard work on the council standing up for Caerau, strong on issues concerning social services and education, contributing much, criticising when it needed to.

I did meet her again until 2004 when I saw her at Farmfoods in Ely on the site of the old Ely hospital, she asked if I wanted to stand for Lib Dems in Ely in the 2004 local elections, I initially resisted it, I was not politically active, and that time possibly might return to the US (which I did in 2005), and did not want to stand as a “paper” candidate. Against my better judgement I did, there was no real support from Lib Dems, and in Ely, there were a lot of candidates standing against Russell Goodway, and I said they should not have 3Lib Dems standing, because it would split the vote, which it did, my vote was far higher than the other 2 LibDems who were not from Ely. To this day I believe if I had not stood Russell may have lost his seat to Charlie Gale who was only 40 seats behind him. That was the end of that. The Lib Dems won the election and formed a minority administration. Jacqui became the first Liberal Democratic  Lord Mayor and the first Liberal Lord Mayor since the early 20th Century. She did sterling work one piece of controversy was her refusal to host the Evangelical preacher, Luis Palau because of his views on Gays, which to be fair is traditional, but wrong, she got a flack over that, but it was the right call.

She continued as a councillor on the backbenches continuing her hard work. She and Roger Burley’s loss came as a shock but not a surprise. As she pointed out that the coalition with the Tories was very unpopular and cost not only her seat but cost the Lib Dems Cardiff. However, even though the was out of the office she still worked tirelessly for the community she loved.

Her successor Cllr Peter Bradbury has followed her hard-working example and is more Liberal is work ethic than he would care to admit, long may he reign.

It's true, Jacqui could be a prickly character and you might use that rather tiresome cliche “like marmite, you either you liked or not” yes, she was a pain, but that was a part of her that got things done, and yes she did not suffer fools gladly.

Yes, Jacqui, we’ll miss you!

REST IN PEACE! BECAUSE GOD WON’T GET ANY, BECAUSE SHE WILL BOSS HIM ABOUT!