Dudley Andrew
(1922-2004)
Dudley was born in Nottingham in 1922. He went to High Pavement school and university. (He cycled across Europe at the end of school at what was an interesting political time.)
He held a number of clerical jobs in Nottingham, seemingly more interested in living life than following a career. He had some articles published in newspapers before taking a job as a journalist for NALGO in 1966 in London and only retired in 1987, moving back to Nottingham in 1993.
He loved reading and writing, literature and the arts. Influenced by left-wing teachers at school in the '30s, he loved George Orwell and perhaps influenced as such, led a disengaged life in "gentile poverty". He treated people as equals and enjoyed seeing how they got on. He was passionate about equality and fairness. He loathed war and violence. He loved the countryside, especially Derbyshire, and cared about the environment generally. He had a sense of humour and communicated well. He was politically engaged and as well as his membership of the Labour Party, was a member of other groups such as Watford against the Poll Tax.
He transferred to Mapperley branch in October 1993 and was soon writing to me to object to the planned Orbital Road. He was concerned about environmental issues such as the impact of open-cast mining as well as local environmental issues such as street cleanliness and the state of local car parks. He was the first to raise the issue of the Dornoch Avenue embankment with me, which was replaced with proper walls and railings.
He held forthright views and hosted the "hot-spot" at Mapperley branch Labour Party meetings, deliberately introduced to allow him to keep us focused on the issues of the day.
Dudley attended Nottingham East GCs and the Nottingham City Council Labour Group. He campaigned in many elections, and continued to help even when his eye-sight started to fail. He hosted the cttee. rooms for the old Mapperley A block in the November 2003 Sherwood by-election and was delivering leaflets to the Win/Wood tower blocks as recent as Spring. On occasions, he represented me at residents' meetings that I couldn't attend.
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