Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Dean, Josh (O2022.1) |
| Interviewee | Josh Dean (JD) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) Frances Green (FG) |
| Date | 07/01/2022 |
| Transcriber by | Freda Joshua (using Otter.Ai for initial transcript) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2022.1
Interviewee: Josh Dean (JD)
Interviewers: Peter Ruffles (PR) and Frances Green (FG)
Date: 7th January 2022
Venue: 62 Hertingfordbury Road, Hertford
Transcriber: Freda Joshua (using Otter.Ai for initial transcript)
Typed by: Freda Joshua
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PR: OK, well, welcome to 62 Hertingfordbury Road. This is Peter Ruffles at home, and I’m in the company of Josh Dean and Frances Green. And the date is …, do I have to say this?
FG: Yes, we do!
PR: It’s Friday, the seventh of January 2022. That’s an achievement.
PR: Now, Josh, you're 22, last May, that's May 21. You fought an election to represent Hertford on the big County Council, Hertfordshire County Council, you were the Labour candidate, official. You very nearly won, and it was a hugely successful personal campaign and party political campaign in what had become regarded, really, as a pretty safe Conservative seat. The question, my question, is, had you won, and it was extremely close, you'll tell us the figures later, what do you think winning would have done to your life?
JD: Well, it would have made me a lot more busy I can imagine - that was the first thing that sprung to mind. You know, I’d started going to university during the campaign, you know, so there was a sort of evaluation of how to balance everything. So to my life, I would have, you know, not moved to Wembley part time, which is what I've done, I would have stayed in Hertford and I would have commuted, and I would have done learning from a distance so that I could focus on Hertford and focus on my residents.
And it was only later on in the campaign that that seemed a little more likely, you know. Early on, I wasn't quite so sure that that would be a possibility. But I was ready to make that sort of sacrifice because, you know, I was very conscious that if I was potentially going to win, there was no way on earth that I was not going to live here. I mean, that would be, as you would agree, absolute sacrilege for a local councillor. So you know, there was the possibility that it would have meant that I'd have to slightly change how I studied, it would have meant - I'd have to sort of re-evaluate, you know, how I was going to do things like that, but I was comfortable with that. I was, you know, it was a really exciting possibility for me, I'd been working with our local Labour councillors for several years, I was part of the campaign that got them elected, and I was conscious of the changes that I'd have to make, and, as I say, comfortable with that.
But a lot of it for me, it wasn't just about how it impact me it was for me, it was a very personal campaign, as you say, it was really about how it impacts Hertford. And that might sound slightly big headed in a way but, you know, Hertford hadn't had Labour representation at the county level since, I think, the last Labour county council election was 97, or around that time, on, surprisingly, better days for the Labour Party. So it was a real conscious thought in my mind not only will I potentially be a county councilor, the first Labour county councillor in quite a long while, and that was a real responsibility that went along with that. So I was conscious of what it would mean for me, absolutely. But I was conscious what it would mean for the town. I was conscious of the example I'd have to set and the work I would have to do. And I was conscious of how I could be the best councillor I possibly could be. Obviously that wasn't the case when all the votes stacked up at the end of the campaign. A little disappointing, but obviously really, really proud of where we ended up.
PR: Remarkable, remarkable figures. Do you remember the figures?
JD: I'm quite ashamed to say not exactly, but I know how many votes I was behind by. So I was 171 votes away from winning, I believe, In about 2000. Yes, so I think it was 1171 people that may have voted for me. I realise it's terrible because you’d think I would remember this but it was not actually my last election campaign.
PR: I think it's a tribute to your personality and character. You've not been shouting that forever and ever and ever.
JD: No, I think I focused more on the number of votes between me and winning than anything else. But you know, to have had as many people as it was, you know, over 1000 actually vote for me, was pretty staggering actually.
PR: And, If I may say so, against the County Councillor who succeeded me, but has been a very good County Councillor and so, an established name. He's currently the Mayor, Bob Deering. And so you weren't - we didn't put up a weak candidate against a sitting member but one who's very competent and good. And, Josh, our paths have crossed personally but not our swords, as I said - although perhaps they should have been swords, but they haven't been - a number of times and why we're party politically opposed. I have been a great admirer, and I know others have as well, of the way you're kind of using your life, your years. That's a bit patronizing, it's not really meant to be.
Could we trace those years through, biographically, are you Hertford born and bred?
JD: I am, yes. And as you might remember, that was quite a big part of my local elections campaign. And I remember writing the words born in Hertford, went to school here, hoping to represent here.
So, I was born in, well technically I was born in Welwyn Garden City, but I say I was born in Hertford because I was here very quickly afterwards. So there's not a day that I remember, that wasn't in Hertford, and I, you know, I grew up here, all the way from being born. I've lived in various places around Hertford. I've been to various schools around Hertford, and I've had the advantage of also working in our town as well. So when I was born, my parents sent me to Duncombe School in Bengeo. Which I struggle to remember lots of early on, but I do remember having really good memories there. I've still got very close friends from my time there as well.
And when we were getting towards going to secondary school, I knew I was going to go to Richard Hale. I was the only boy from my year to go to Richard Hale from Duncombe that year, which is very uncommon, I remember teachers reminding me about that. It’s very odd that I was the only one going to Richard Hale. And it was a very interesting experience, you know. I'd - it was an all boys school, obviously, and I’d come from a mixed school, so there was a bit of an adjustment. And it was I think when you're at school, you sort of, you're just trying to get through to the end of the day and get home and do your homework, which I assure you I did on time all the time, most of the time! But you know, it took some adjustment being an all boys school and I don't really have any problem with that. I struggled a little bit, not just adjusting to an all boys school, but growing up, being a teenager, you know, it was a very odd, very confusing time.
And sometimes I felt a little bit like I was a bit of - trying to think in the right way to describe it - I felt out of place, a little bit odd. I had different interests to other boys my age, wasn't particularly sporty, which is a big thing at Richard Hale, you know. Very vivid memories of being horrendous in rugby practices and things like that. But I was aware that I was a little bit, I'm going to go with ‘odd’, and I had slightly different interests. And really, you know, the politics, the activism, all the things like that, you can trace it all back to probably my last few years at Richard Hale. I had become really interested in campaigning around, I'm gonna say year 9 or year 10. It was actually young people’s mental health that really interested me, because I'd had friends who had struggled with mental health problems, you know. I've been pretty open in the past that I've struggled mental health problems. And so it was an area that really I was passionate about, I was really passionate about making sure young people were supported. I really cared about, you know, ensuring that support was there for them in schools. And putting the politics of it all aside, you know, I was concerned about mental health provision for young people.
So I think that at 15 years old, I wrote a paper on mental health in young people. I don't think it was very good in all fairness, but I was passionate about it and I wrote it and I gave it to my maths teacher who was the Deputy Assistant Head. Her name was Miss Pretty and I remember giving it to her. I don't know what happened to it but she was very grateful, very interested in it. And that's really where it all started. And so, as I was coming to the end of my time at Richard Hale, I was really conscious of all these issues, and I was getting more and more interested in campaigning and, for me, it was protesting at the time, actually. And events conspired in a slightly odd way, because, having felt slightly out of place when I was younger, I actually made quite a lot of good friends towards the end of my time at Richard Hale, most of them actually at different schools.
And so the summer of that year, I made quite a lot of friends, at Chauncy in Ware, and when I got to my first year of sixth form, I stayed at Richard Hale for probably about four days and moved to Chauncy, which I don't think Richard Hale was terribly happy with, although I did go back about two years ago, to give a talk on voting and elections, and they were quite glad to have me, so I think they've moved on. But I moved to Chauncy, which probably proved to be a bit of a mistake. It didn't last, I was there for about eight months and I dropped out of sixth form, which having been, you know, born to a relatively middle class family in Hertford, and, you know, being from where the majority of young people go to sixth form and go to university, I found myself at a bit of a loose end, and I wasn't really terribly sure what I was going to do. My first ever job, not long after this, was back in Hertford. It was two jobs actually. I was doing social media consulting for a recruitment company during the weekdays, and then at the weekend, I worked at the Starbucks that used to be in Bircherley Green. It was a busy, busy time.
PR: You're famous for that, if I mention Josh Dean to people, they're more likely to talk about that than the glorious election campaign.
JD: I think that was really where I became aware of the town that we live in, and the people that live in it. And, you know, I've worked various jobs. When I left sixth form I've done everything from social media, I worked at a recruitment company, doing recruiting, years later I worked in London doing marketing. I've done a bit of everything, really, but the job that taught me the most about work and the most about life is working at Starbucks, absolutely. And it gave me my work ethic. It taught me a lot about the town that we live in, the people that live in it. And it gave me a real appreciation for actually the importance of town centres as well, and I could talk about town centres all day long.
You know, all this runs quite parallel to where my campaigning started as well. So I had made some good friends in London, this was slightly before I left sixth form, actually, it was all around Brexit and voting at 16 and 17. And I'd been involved in a protest in London about the vote at 16. I'd made some good friends and we started an organisation called Teen Voice UK. It was non-profit to give young people a real voice in politics. It was about giving them structures to organize, really, on the issues that matter to them. And, you know, while I was working weekdays, at the weekend I was doing this in London. And it's interesting, really, because I had, at quite a young age, sworn off ever joining a political party, ever. I was dead set against it. You know, I was very much a protester and a campaigner and very against really getting involved in a political party, because I sort of felt like I'd be selling out actually.
And so I was doing these campaigns in London, and the general election came in 2017. And I bumped into my local Labour Party candidate in Hertford town centre, a lady called Catherine Shiva, who is, you know, really very good, and I took a leaflet, and I walked away thinking, ‘Yeah, you know, I could, I could see myself, you know, I think the Labour Party is what I identify with’. And so it was interesting, because I did start to think about politics and things like that. As I say, it runs right alongside what I was doing in Hertford. So, to go back to - I'm trying to piece it all together because they run quite parallel to each other. I stopped working for the recruitment company and I was at Starbucks full time, until the start of January 2018. And as you may know, early 2018 is when local businesses in Bircherley Green started to close for the redevelopment, so we closed quite early on and then I found myself a bit of loose end. And it wasn't long after I started working in London, I worked for a tech company, and I was doing marketing and it was quite fun. I didn't enjoy the commute at all. And I briefly moved to Ware as well, only for about a year or so, before I moved back to Hertford. But yes, I moved to Ware for a little while. And again, this sort of brings me back to the politics, actually, because you'll be aware there was a lot happening in Ware Town Council, councillors being suspended in arguments in the council chamber…
[pause]
JD: And this is probably, you know, traceable back [so you had the campaigning and everyone to be involved in political party to the 2017 election – indistinct] I was thinking, you know, I sort of identify with the Labour Party. And then early 2018, where there was, obviously all these things going on in the Town Council, I thought, ‘Well, someone should say something’, you know, ‘Someone should do something’. And I knew there were local elections coming up a year later. And that was when I really seriously started to think about getting involved. And there was a councillor, a Labour councillor, because we had local elections in 2018, her name was Ellie Emberson. She was 18 years old, the age I was then, or the age I’d just turned, I should say, and she had been elected in Reading. And I knew people in Reading.
So I got in touch, and I said, ’How did you do it?’ And she gave me advice. And actually, it's interesting, because I had a conversation with her recently, but it was worth putting on the record that had I not had that conversation, I almost certainly would never have stood in an election, ever. It was 100% Ellie Emberson that talked me into how to get involved in the Labour Party and how to stand in elections. So it was quite interesting, you know, that was sort of a turning point in a way because, you know, if you look back to school I felt a little bit, I don't want to use the word outcast, because it sounds terrible, it's not a phrase to use, but I felt a little bit different from everyone else. And I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with my life. And I was a bit of a loose end after leaving sixth form. And, and I found something that I, I really wanted to do, and I really cared about because it wasn't just about, you know, I think I'd be a good councillor, it was about, there are these issues on the Town Council, and I think local people really need better representation than that. So as I said the county elections weren't my first elections, because actually, my first election was in Ware in Chadwell, and I came third.
PR: Because Chadwell actually is the safest Tory seat. So that was interesting. Josh, we'd better just, I suppose, conclude this biographical bit with now, the present study thing. Is that sensible?
JD: Yes, absolutely.
FG: Can I just interject. There's just one thing to record maybe if we can. You said that the conversation you had with Ellie was so informative, and I think it would be nice, maybe, if you could say what was it about that conversation? And what she said that really pushed you into that step? Because it sounds like it was so formative, Josh,
JD: Um, it's interesting. It's, it's the littlest things. I just, I was thinking about what I wanted to do. I was thinking about all this stuff on the Town Council. I was thinking so much about, you know, how would someone get involved in that, and I just, I saw another young person doing something that I a) wanted to do, but b) I really thought young people should do. We really do struggle in getting young people involved in politics, that was what Teen Voice was about. And that's a big part of something I'm passionate about now. And so I saw this young person doing something I thought was really important. I thought I could do that too, probably.
And so that was probably what really had an impact on me, because I knew it was possible after that. I had always seen politics and politicians at any level as adults who had a place there, and who had a voice there. And for someone who was passionate about, you know, young people's issues, who cared about giving young people a voice, I saw a young person doing that, giving themselves, as a young person, voice, but also giving young people a voice. And for me, it was a sort of light bulb moment, I thought, you know, that is really inspiring. And I thought maybe I could do that. So that I would say that would really be the crux of that conversation, actually, but to trace biographically to now. - obviously, I've skipped slightly over the county elections, which we may come to talk about in a bit and may not. But I stood in those elections this year, as I mentioned there was a bit of an equation of when I stay here, I live here, which I had no problem with, because I love Hertford.
I’d study from a distance, and I'd be a County Councillor. And it didn't go that way. And I actually sort of found myself at a point where I could say I'm very proud of what we did, but we didn't win. I can stay involved locally because I live here part time, but I also live part time near to uni. So I'm studying at the University of Westminster, unsurprisingly, I'm doing politics. I really found something and stuck with that one, actually. And I live part time in Wembley. And I'm really enjoying it actually, it's been a tricky one tracking it through COVID, but I've really enjoyed it. And it's been quite a good experience. Up till now as well, I was Chair of the Hertford and Stortford Labour Party up until November this year when I stood down. And at the Labour Party's Regional Conference in November, I was elected to the Regional Executive Committee as the Youth Officer. So, once again young people's issues, something I care about and so … Yeah, that's me.
PR: So we're about, as a group, recording Hertford as very local, so with your wider experience and at national level, as you just said, including county stuff, through the constituency, which is Hertford and Stortford currently, with that wider experience through party politics, how do you see the Hertford Community? How, how do you view it?
You're obviously planning to manipulate it. I don't say that in an unkind way at all, and to get the best out of it and persuade people to come in. But what is it you're seeing about this community, Hertford, what kind of place is it? How does it compare with Derby or Aberystwyth or some other place? What kind of people are the comparators? Are we like anybody else, but it can be difficult to get away from constituency, but if you can stick with Hertford itself, it will be convenient.
JD: Obviously, I really want to say, actually, that Hertford is like nowhere else, and that's because I grew up here. Hertford is my home and, you know the people that walk past in the street and half of the people that I've walked past everyday in my life. It's difficult to compare Hertford to anywhere, it's difficult to compare your home town to anywhere because it's home.
But from my perspective, Hertford is an interesting place. Growing up in Hertford, getting involved in politics, I was aware that Hertford was more blue than red to put it politically. Hertford is a middle class area, but there are, you know, quite a lot of affluent areas in Hertford, but there are places that aren't. And for me, one of the things about Hertford I found most interesting, perhaps, was that because, you know, there are areas of deprivation in Hertford, there are areas where people are really struggling in Hertford. I remember really clearly, actually, the general election of 2019, I was in Sele, and I was speaking to this lady on the doorstep. She was sharing a house with five other people, and she was renting one room for £500 a month, and she was moving because they were putting the rent up again. And she's a carer, she works in the NHS. And I sort of, I took a lot away from that conversation, because Hertford is that person, you know, and all towns and all cities and all parts of the country, we are only as good as the people at the bottom of the pile and we can only be judged on how we appreciate and take care of them. Now I've always seen Hertford as an appreciative place. I've seen Hertford as a place that cares. You know, during the pandemic when we were on our doorsteps clapping for carers, everyone on my street was out there. I think Hertford has a very interesting sense of community and, you know, a sense of care for people like that lady.
PR: So that's where you and I have a great deal in common, basically. And the fascination for me is that Hertford, although you say it's kind of blue by tradition, it's also a thinking population, I believe, at least layers of it are and that layer is sufficiently big to swing elections. There are people who, I'm thinking in a sense party politically, just do what they've always done but there is quite a big layer across the town of people who actually assess against current circumstances before they cross their vote, and I'm 150% with you on working for those who have the greatest need.
And, I will say, in defence of the Tory party, we have had individual members, the party as a whole I should be saying but really individual members who would be 100% in agreement with you and have worked hard, particularly in Sele Ward, for those people who really, by and large, don't even vote, let alone, you know, vote the wrong way for them. And of course, I was personally the only Conservative for eight years on the Town Council, and the majority was Labour. So, and currently we have Labour, Lib Dem, Conservative, and most interestingly for me in Bengeo, a very big Green vote, so endlessly fascinating, we’re now taking, you know, a particular partisan side on it. It just is really, really interesting how things are going. The national pendulum is the bedevilment of us locally because Boris will upset enough people for people not to vote Conservative for a decent Conservative Council locally, or Tony Blair will swing them in and swing them out as he has done.
JD: It’s interesting. I mean, the one thing I will say, and I mean no disrespect to anyone here, it was interesting in the County elections, because more than a few times, I would knock on a door, and I’d say, ‘I'm your local County Councillor’. ‘I'm sorry, I'm voting for the Conservative candidate. I've known Peter for many years’. And I sort of said, ‘Peter’s not your local candidate’. But I've had an awareness of you more or less since I was 11 years old. You are as Hertford as Hertford gets, and even though we have Labour Councillors in Sele now at the district's level, that's still very keenly felt. And I think as you say, that's absolutely what we have in common because we obviously care very much about the town, but I think, particularly Sele as well. And I think that that is because regardless of who is sitting on, you know, the Council representing Sele, you know, it has to be acknowledgement that I think the problem here is, yes, there has to be acknowledgement that Sele does have its problems as all parts of town do. But Sele also has its own unique sense of community.
PR: Absolutely.
JD: And it has to be nurtured.
PR: People who move away from Sele, because they have to for financial reasons, their aspiration is to go back. So many times, not everybody, but so many times, it happens. So it's a lovely community, but has had difficulties. Can I just go back to the education briefly, we mustn't, um…. I wonder whether the pastoral side of things was, as a teacher, I was in charge of pastoral care in a huge school, which is really, really difficult to actually get down to the individual at times and systems have to operate rather than natural things. Sele School, a secondary school small enough and expensive enough, you know, to put his arm around each individual child and each teacher knows because of the size, in a big school and you are into Chauncy and Richard Hale. And you chose the maths teacher to make a statement to at some point, how did you view that school community actually looking after individuals? Were they giving a decent go, by and large, or would you want to criticise either school for ……
JD: I wouldn't want to criticise. Richard Hale is different because Richard Hale is a very traditional school, you know, 400 years of history there. It's an all boys school, which provides a very different environment, a very, very different environment, a different style of teaching. Because teenage boys can be challenging as many of them I'm in my year were, and I'm sure I was at times as well. So I wouldn't want to criticise, I think they gave it their best go. But there's a stigma around talking about how you feel as a boy. And I think as much as, you know, there was probably a struggle on the part of the school to tackle these issues and, you know, mental health awareness is a reasonably modern thing, certainly in school and certainly with young people, as much as there's a challenge to tackle that on the schools part, there’s a challenge for young boys to come forward and say if they have a problem.
I certainly know it was a challenge for me. And so, I wouldn't want to criticise because it's very much a product of the circumstances, and that's just the way things are. I would pay real tribute, though, to the Student Support Centre at Richard Hale who were very, very good, once you had the chance to speak to them, who really did try their best, and I think did a good job. I have spoken to other you know, old Hale boys who felt differently whether they were in the same year as me, older, younger. I do think it's a product of the system where there's differing outcomes. Chauncy was different, you know, and someone else I would pay tribute to, actually, is the head of Chauncy, Mr O'Sullivan, who I'm sure many people will already know. You know, Chauncy comes from a different history to Richard Hale and, you know, it has a different reputation. I'll be perfectly honest, I wasn't fully aware of their reputation before I moved there, actually, I was a sort of naïve. But you know, Mr O’Sullivan really did a lot for Chauncy and, rightfully, he has quite a strong reputation, so he's done a lot there but …….
PR: Many, many Chauncy ex-pupils say that. And he particularly, party politically, he'd have been flowing with you. But it's from some Conservative people who've been former pupils, who've also said, although he wears his own politics on his sleeve, that they were given scope and supported enormously as people. People are going to listen to this maybe in 50 years’ time, so could you just describe your campaigning method? I don't want any party political secrets, but how did 2021, for example, let's just say the county elections, how did you and your party go about campaigning?
JD: Well, it's interesting, actually, because obviously, I mentioned before, I stood in 2019. And the first thing to say is I learned a lot from that election, because it was not an enormous success for me personally. It obviously was in Hertford, where we elected two Labour councillors to the District Council for Sele, and I played quite a big role in their campaign, I was running the campaign in Hertford. So we took a lot of what we'd learned. We stayed out on the doorsteps, particularly in the general election.
But when we came to the elections of 2021, it was completely unlike any election we'd faced before, or anyone had faced before, because it was fought during COVID. And so there was an immediate struggle there about how we were going to do leafleting, because at that time the government was saying you can't have people out leafleting, you have to pay for it? How can we go knocking on doors? You can't it's not allowed. We had to work out how to speak people over the phones. So really, we took everything we knew about campaigning and completely re-evaluated it. And there's a lot of very, you know, political things I could say about it. But for me, it comes back to why I put myself forward for the seat. And it's tempting to say it's the only seat we thought Labour could win in, which is true actually, if you look at the numbers, but the real reason was, it was a seat where I think Labour representation would have been a real benefit. I do think our two Labour councillors Carol and Mary were really good, not of course to forget Castle where I also think that they would benefit from Labour representation. There are certainly areas in Castle Ward very similar to Sele.
PR: Hornsmill
JD: Absolutely. And so it was, it was about a) recognising that it would benefit from Labour representation. And for me personally, I had worked in the town centre, which is, you know, is at least part of the ward. I had spent a lot of time in Sele, a lot of time in parts of Castle, 21 years in Hertford. I actually spent a lot of time in lots of Hertford to be fair. But I personally felt that it was a ward I could represent and that I thought I could effectively campaign in and the big.. biggest thing for me was actually making sure that the people who were going out to vote on polling day knew that they were voting for a person from Hertford. And that I was not just a Labour rosette, I was a Hertford person. And as I said, born here, grew up here, worked here. I wanted people to know that someone’s going to represent them, who had grown up here and lived here as well. I want them to know they're going to be represented by one of their own effectively. But also ……
PR: You've got young people voting for you.
JD: Probably, partly because I bumped into some friends in the pub and asked them to, but I would hope some of them did. I actually there's one person I would point to, the young woman, I think, 18/19, who had commented on my social media, I did a video for the election. They said, ‘I was planning to vote for Bob Deering because my parents vote Conservative, my friends were Conservative, but I've watched the video, I'm gonna vote Labour’. So at least one ……
PR: Yeah, that does mean there will be others. Social media, telephoning, do you use those? Did you use much social media successfully, do you think in the campaign?
JD: I think so. Social media is a big thing for me personally, because I'm active. You know, yeah,
PR: It'll change of course, in 50 years. So what’s social media like today?
JD: Oh, well, today, it's, there's a temptation to use Twitter a lot for politics, but, actually, Facebook is where it's at. I think you've got good local Facebook groups, you’ve got lots of people on there. I did a lot of Facebook and Instagram as well, actually, which, which I quite enjoy, because I quite like Instagram
PR: So do you use groups within Facebook, as it were, or was it sort of an open general Josh Dean?
JD: I have a Facebook page, which I used for the election.
PR: Do people have to find that? They have to make the effort?
JD: If they search me up, yes. But we did some promotions to get it out there as well. But I am, I try to be active on local Facebook groups, and I try to be active, you know, as much as possible on there and speak to people on pages and things. So I try to be active beyond making people come and look for me.
PR: Have you tried telephone campaigning?
JD: Yes, I have. Phone canvassing is interesting, because we knew it was unlikely we would be able to canvas, obviously. There was a month where we were able to, and we took full advantage of that. And the reason is, phone canvassing is good. It allowed us to speak to people when we otherwise couldn't. But it's not the same, you can't look someone in the eye. That's a big, a big thing for me, looking someone in the eye,
PR: You can easily interrupt their lives in a way, in the sense that the knock on the front door doesn't do in quite the same way, it’s intrusion.
JD: I do think though, whether it's phone canvassing or on the doorstep, it was interesting. Because we had an advantage in that, I think it's fair to say, the 2019 election was contentious. Some less than pleasant experiences on the doorstep, I have to say, many of them not entirely unjustified, based on where the Labour Party was at the time. But there was, there was anger, there was quite a lot of anger.
2021 was completely different. Even the people who didn't want to speak were very polite, and I think part of that is politics had moved on a little bit from Brexit, from the Corbyn years and things like that. But also people had been locked inside for such a long time, and the social interaction was important to them. And actually the campaign went beyond just, ‘Hi, my name is Josh, would you vote for me’ it was about making sure people were okay, actually, seeing how they were, seeing what we could do as a Labour Party, what I could do as a as a local person. But I think that the single biggest takeaway from the campaign for me, and the single biggest takeaway I take from any Labour campaign, the Labour Party has a tendency to be very downbeat, and a tendency to fill campaign leaflets with criticisms of the Conservatives, - this is why the Conservatives are wrong, this is what they're doing wrong. And for me, I felt very strongly, we have to turn that on its head and we have to turn ourselves outwards. And we have to talk about what we're going to do, why we're the right choice, and then also personalise and say this is what I will do if I'm elected.
And, actually, an interesting point of canvassing, I think there were very few actual criticisms of the Conservative candidate in my leaflets and in my campaign, because I felt we actually ran, and all political candidates will obviously say, I felt we ran a really positive campaign, but I really felt we ran a positive campaign, a campaign that represented Hertford and what we could do for it, and I'm proud to say, although maybe in a slightly big-headed way, it was a really person campaign. It was a campaign that I felt I represented, you know, it represented me and my history in the town personally and, you know, towards the end, it could have been a winning campaign. Obviously, we fell short, but, you know, I was really proud of it really, really proud of it.
PR: Well, when they do a word search on this transcript, I think the word we've used most is campaign, isn't it? Because it was essential. You described earlier how it was the campaigning, the essential thing of campaigning without necessarily being part of political cause, but campaigning about some other issue. Can we just go back to home life? You really began in the public life pretty late on but I'm just interested to know what steers you may have had from home? What opposition you may have had from home? Quite, quite late, when they would have had to start proposing I suppose. How did that go, domestically?
JD: Um, why is it interesting, I come from a family of Conservative voters, apart from my granddad, and, actually, my nan's a UKIP voter, but the less said about that the better, probably. I come from family of Conservative voters, although, you know, my mum isn't particularly political, although she's a teacher, and she has voted Labour and she voted Labour in 2015, because she thought I looked a bit like Ed Miliband. So there wasn't a huge amount of opposition there. My dad is, you know, dyed in the wool Conservative, my dad's from the East End of London, he grew up in Plaistow. And, you know, he really worked his way up from, you know, what I would call a disadvantaged background, you know, real working class family and, he works in London and he works in business and now lives just outside Bishops Stortford, and he worked his way up and through that became a Conservative, and so we have differences of opinion. You know, my mum and I don't really talk about politics, but she has voted Labour. So I wasn't really steered. And the most opposition came from my dad saying he didn't want me to be a sort of scruffy student socialist. I wouldn't say I'm scruffy I would say I'm left of centre.
You know, socialist is an interesting word. I try not to label it too much. I care more about policy than labels, and if policy will help people. But really the political influence in my family, it was my granddad actually. And we didn't have enormous conversations about politics. You know, it was - we didn't really talk a lot about these things. But I was aware that he had been, you know, had a similar - he went on the first CND marches. And they marched all the way, I think, from where the nuclears, you know, were being stored in part of Scotland all the way down to London. And the story he told me was, he said to them, I'll meet you in Hyde Park, and he didn't do the whole thing. But it was something he, you know, he cared about. So, you know, that was something he was - he wasn't as political as me, but he was aware of it.
So I would say it came from that sort of direction, in a sense, or that was the person I found was close to politically, I don't know if he voted Labour, but I don't actually know if he voted. But I know that when he was my age, there was a similar thing there. And we had similar interests in music. I like protest music, I'm a Bob Dylan fan, which is a little out of character for someone my age. But, you know, that was the same music he liked. And so we had a similar view on that, but something I don't often talk about is, when I was when I did my first local elections, in 2019, my granddad had just been diagnosed with a brain tumour, and not long after the elections, he died, in late summer 2019. So it was an interesting time, because I look back to that election campaign, look back to the politics of it, and that was the time we most spoke about politics, actually, when he was in hospital, when I visited him and so, yeah, that's the person I was closest to in terms of politics in my family, although we didn't talk about it a lot. And you know, I remember the election results and I lost and came third, but he said, he texted me and he said, you know, it's a good go, maybe next time. So I hold on to that, you know,
PR: I mean, my last one, for instance, you can think of something else we really ought to have asked Josh, but still remaining in the Hertford community thing and growing up in it, I'm wondering what freedoms you had as an individual child, you know, When, can you remember, when you were first allowed out on your own? How did you spend those earlier years as an individual sort of reaching out from the homestead, as it were?
JD: Um I'll be honest, I didn't really start to get out a lot until I made my friends over the summer, It was it was the end of 2016, so the end of my GCSE’s and the summer after that. And I made a lot of friends and I spent quite a lot of time at the skating bowl. I don't skate, my friends do, I couldn't, you know, I'm terrible at it, I can barely ride a bike. I went face first into a bush during cycling proficiency at year 6. But my friends hung out there, so that's where we went. And actually, I have really fond memories of that, you know, making these friends and it's all, it might all sound a bit disparate in the way that I'm going through it all, you know, the politics, campaigning, school friendship, but actually, I see it is all linked together, because that's where I was exposed to all these different kinds of people. That was where I made my closest friends.
PR: So were you driven to the skates? Or did you walk or was it public transport.
JD: I walked, I'm a prolific walker, which is good for someone who likes to knock on doors for political campaigns. I walk everywhere. As you might have guessed by my last comment, not an enormous cyclist. But yeah, walk, public transport.
PR: When did you start doing that?
JD: Oh,15?
PR: Well into the teens as it were. As an eight-year-old were you mucking around in some local pits behind your house?
JD: Not really, no, I was quite a sort of, as a much younger child, I was a little closed off. I'll be honest, I was a little closed off and I didn't go out as much, and if I did go to see friends I’d see them at their house. That may be a little bit of a by-product of the school that I went to, actually. But as I got older and went to Richard Hale, I did make friends. And, you know, I did have friends at Richard Hale when I was younger that I would go and see. And so, yeah, I did walk to see my friends. And we would occasionally walk into Hertford, but when I turned 15/16 I was out a lot, you know, after school, weekends, and it was the skating bowl in Hertford, the skate park in Ware, which we ran a campaign to get refurbished several years ago.
Or, where else did we go, we sometimes went to Stevenage, sometimes we went to Hoddesdon. But it was really Hertford, the skate bowl in Hertford, and, actually Starbucks in Hertford, which is where I ended up working there, obviously. So it's interesting because actually, with these friends, where I ended up working, where I campaigned, Hertford, the town centre, it's integral to it.
PR: The Starbucks thing I fully understand having worked in the newsagents in the town centre, which did the same, exactly the same thing for me. Huge, huge way as you described earlier in the tape, so that's excellent. I’m glad the bowl gets a mention. That was a campaign of mine with Jim Thornton, Conservative, to get ramps installed, and we had to fund it as well, privately, to a large extent, so glad you benefited from it.
JD: Oh, absolutely
PR: There's still arrangement where the Town Council pays the District Council to maintain it. So it looks as if you see district workmen there, as it were, (can I say workmen?) people cleaning it and doing that kind of thing. But in fact, it's the Town Council because that was its origins as a little campaign. Like you, campaigns are essential in life. There was always something around the corner.
My current one, probably the last public one, is to get a lift to platform 1 at Hertford North Station, and that's been a decade. My failed one, of course, which was longer than a decade, is hydropower at Mill Bridge. That's it, it's now been hit on the head. I can't really understand it, but, anyway, that's another matter. But you do need rather than just plod through the agendas and seeing what people generally have sort of trickled into the council, I think you have to have something as an individual to push for and look for every opportunity to do, as well as having, as you've described, issues of some kind, I try and give myself a year at a time to focus on a particular thing, one of which is mental health.
But I’ll have a kind of mental health year, at the moment I'm linking it with loneliness, and isolation, because it ties in with the pandemic. And my birthday thing on Facebook was this year for Mind, not this year, the year before. 700 quid, I think that's what I kind of want to do, all the time have something, and then in an ordinary meeting, and all sorts of things, at random, come up, you spot your opportunity of getting a word in for whatever. Or you can be spread and scattered so thinly, that you just chip in on everything, or don't chip in or anything at all. So it's interesting that, you know, you've identified things like that which have been common all the way through. What else ought we to say? Are we there pretty well?
FG: I've just got a couple of questions, I suppose, arising from some of the things you said. So you're studying politics at Westminster, but I was thinking, you know, you must have lived through a great deal more actual politics than maybe many of your fellow students on the course. And I just wondered how you were finding the course? Was it teaching you stuff? Was it changing your views? Are you thinking that actually, it's not where it should be in terms of education for someone like you? What's your experience of the course at the moment?
JD: I'm really enjoying it. It is teaching me things absolutely especially a lot of theory things, you know, but you're absolutely right, I've lived through a lot of political events. You know, actually, going back, Brexit was quite a big one as well. Especially people my age, who felt, you know, passionate about being able to vote. So, you know, Brexit, COVID, a couple of elections, yeah, because I'm older than the people on my course, I'm little older some of my friends, so, you know, I sort of talk to them about it and have a slightly different perspective. But, yeah, I think it also informs things nicely, but it's the theory behind things I'm really interested in, and I'm really enjoying. You know, there's a lot of other things I'm learning about, so international relations, international politics, that I'm really enjoying. But it has been a really good experience so far. Yeah, I'm enjoying it quite a lot I have to say. They all inform each other. So it's really good.
FG: And it's constant learning, isn't it? Really, I suppose. And the final question of interest, perhaps, to people who listen to this is maybe about where you see your longer term political trajectory going. And I just want to put that in the context of the fact that, generally speaking, there is a huge falling away of respect for national politicians and a feeling that really, there's very little relevance or trustworthiness, or, yes, something to respect in national politicians. So we've got this huge, overarching sense of disenfranchisement with that level of democracy. And how do you feel working in local politics with that general feeling around you? And can you set your career trajectory politically within that context and talk about it?
PR: She asks difficult questions!
JD: It's tricky, it’s a tricky one to talk about, where I want to go or where I see myself going, because I don't know is the honest answer. But I want to be involved, and I, you know, I want to be involved in bringing about the next Labour government, whatever form that takes. But in terms of politics and politicians, you're absolutely right. There's a sense of disenfranchisement, a sense of distrust, and I think a sense of hatred towards politicians. That's broadly at national politicians, but I've seen it bleed through at local levels in various parts of the country.
Going back to political events that I've lived through and, you know, this applies to both our parties now. Obviously, Joe Cox was murdered in 2016 whilst campaigning, and David Amos, you know, both really sadly, at the end of last year, there is a hatred towards politicians, there is a distrust, and often they're put in danger. That for me has always been a real concern because no one should be in danger doing their job. And, and I feel that, broadly speaking, whatever the political party, most politicians are in it for the right reasons. They're there to represent people, they're there to give residents a voice. And it's a real source of worry for me because it endangers our political system, our democracy, when it's not safe for politicians do that. Because the less safe it becomes, the less those surgeries will be held, the less there'll be out in their communities, and that damages all of us, really. So that's a real worry for me. But that goes hand in hand with restoring respect and trust in politics. There are very good, solid reasons that people don't trust politicians, and that stretches back a long, long time. And no one party can hold their hands up and say we're completely innocent.
And so a big thing for me is restoring trust in politics. Making politicians be seen as respectable again. And I think a big part of that goes to having politicians who are rooted in their communities, who are, you know, of their community, who care about the people that live there, that aren't just out for themselves and that will do their absolute best to represent the people that they're elected to represent. You could look at the last few months for people losing trust in politics, you could look at the last few decades, you could look at things under a Labour Government, you could look at things under a Conservative Government. I think the biggest challenge of politics, and the biggest challenge of any politician, any party, is to uphold the standards that, you know, really people expect, and to find a way of restoring that trust and restoring that respectability. So trying to frame that, where I see myself, I'm going to stick with, ‘I don't know’. But I want to be involved in restoring that trust and electing the next Labour government. So that's where I see myself really, and that's what I care about. And I often say this to people that I sometimes think that if, you know, when the next election comes, and if I go out campaigning, wherever that is, and we have a good long campaign, and we come out with a Labour Government, there's a very good chance I'll sit down and go, ‘Well, that's that then’, and just sort of chill for a while. So you never know. I try to be open about the future, you never know what will happen. But I hope it will involve Hertford in some shape or form. So there we go.
PR: Afterwards, when you walk away thinking, what was that all about, you might consider we're going to talk to others, aren't we? The Conservative, Green and Liberal, Lib Dem, if you think of any questions we ought to be asking them ping me or Frances, you may not. But I don't think it's sensible to do it straightaway. But as things spread out, I think this has been excellent, because you're so gifted with the conversationals but it doesn't follow, it does, that everybody that stands, necessarily, will chat as comfortably as you do. So we may need some more prompts and steers, if you think of anything.
JD: Yeah, my only advice to anyone else that does it, and this is certainly my perspective coming in, I just think it's important to be honest and open, which sounds like a really simple thing. But, you know, we talked at the start about, you know, topics to go over and anything I feel comfortable or uncomfortable with but really, if people do look back at this in however many years, I just wanted to be an open book and that's for whatever reason. I think it just helps and it puts things in context and it gives a perspective and, yeah, my advice to anyone else doing it from any other parties be open as you can and, you know, do personalise it because, you know, that personal perspective, I think, is important.
PR: Good
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