Tag Archives: colin rosenstiel

Many of his old friends and colleagues knew this was coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when it actually happens:

Following a long battle with lymphoma, former councillor Colin Rosenstiel has died. Colin was City councillor for Market Ward from 1973 to 1988 and from 1992 to 2014, a cycling campaigner, a staunch supporter of the Holocaust Memorial Movement and our friend.

— Cambridge Lib Dems (@CambridgeLDs) May 8, 2018

I’ve known Colin for almost half my life. He was a stalwart of the original Lib Dem online community, Cix, back in the day – and in fact he was in there as recently as Saturday. I first met him in real life at the Littleborough and Saddleworth by-election in 1995 where he delivered millions of leaflets.

He really was a proper, old school awkward liberal and he showed that off particularly well in the immigration consultation session in Southport in March, which was the last time I saw him. He was an incorrigible transport geek, so it was fitting that his last speech from the conference floor was on the emergency debate on trains.

He was a Councillor in Cambridge for 33 years. His wife Joye represented the same ward for 28 years.

He and I profoundly disagreed about a few things, most notably all women shortlists, but that didn’t stop us having our arguments and then going to the pub, virtual or otherwise,  and talking about something else. Over the years, I learned a lot from him about liberalism, about the importance of local government, about the history of the party. I always felt I never really needed to understand the intricacies of the Single Transferable Vote because there was always Colin. Heaven knows how this party would have conducted its elections without him. He was doing the job right from the start in 1988 and has a full record of all of them here.