This week, Liberal Democrat Councillor Geoff Reid became Lord Mayor of Bradford. He was proposed for the office by fellow Councillor Jeanette Sunderland. Extracts from her speech follow. It’s longer than our usual articles, but it’s a fascinating read.

Geoff has a lifelong record of community service as a Methodist minister and Councillor. He has spoken truth to power and provoked the ire of a Conservative Cabinet Minister. He played a pivotal role in providing support and healing for communities in Bradford after the riots.

You can read more about him on the Telegraph and Argus site here.

It is with great pleasure that I ask for the support for the nomination of Councillor Geoff Reid to be the Lord Mayor of Bradford for the municipal year 2016-2017.

Geoff Reid will bring a depth to the role of Lord Mayor which finds it roots in his history as a Methodist Minister, a politician, a collaborative write, a visitor to pubs and his love of public transport.
Geoff Reid born on the same day in 1946 as Freddie Mercury, in a two room flat in the Scotswood Road area of Newcastle upon Tyne. His parents wanted a council house but having only one child failed to qualify.

His father, who had returned from five years as a Prisoner of War to become a leading light of the Tyneside Anglo-German Friendship Society, joined a self-build group of 32 men who completed 32 houses in their spare time. Geoff moved across the city to North Heaton, eventually attending Heaton Grammar School. In the 1950s he came on an early visit to Ilkley with Newcastle Methodist Mission Poor Children’s Summer Camp.

Geoff attended Newcastle University to read English Language and Literature, so he lived at home, often returning on the All Night East End Circular bus. His student career included regular participation in debates, losing an election to Kate Adie, and offering overnight hospitality to Hugh Gaitskell’s daughter.

From there he went to Cambridge and collected another first degree while training for the Methodist ministry. He then served as a Methodist Minister in Wallsend, Rotherham, Barnsley, Salford Urban Mission (1986-94) and to Bradford serving at Touchstone, Bradford from 1994 to 2009.

Geoff’s 39 years as a Methodist Minister has seen him working in some of the poorest communities in the cities and Metropolitan Districts of the North. For some years he was a member of the Methodist Conference, the church’s governing body, where he was a regarded variously as “the voice of the north”, team ministry specialist and experienced urban missioner.
He co-authored the Powerful Whispers Report on the Bradford Urban Hearings and chaired the Centenary to Millennium Report, C2M. Geoff helped to establish the first Food Bank, was the first Chair of the BEACON, Bradford Ecumenical Asylum Concern and trained Church Community workers. He also edited a column in the T@A for fifteen years.

Behind all this he secured the future of the Touchstone project, unashamedly exploiting the pages of the Methodist Recorder with his writing skills, to persuade the Methodist Church to put serious money into Bradford.

Geoff also has a record as a political activist having fought political campaigns in the old Rother Valley seat where he managed to gather around him 50 people to hand-address 37,500 leaflets, saving the deposit by 0.9% with 9828 votes and coming 2000 behind Gary Waller, subsequently MP for Keighley, and 35,000 behind the winning Labour candidate!

In Barnsley Geoff secured what is still the highest ever Liberal percentage vote.

Despite his lack of parliamentary electoral successes Geoff was not without his supporters. The former Liberal MP for Colne Valley on recommending Geoff as a Parliamentary Candidate to Party Headquarters said: “His Methodism and his politics blend well together, partly because he is not a stuffy clergyman; he knows he must address the problems and the human nature around him.”

It gave Geoff great pleasure to stand in the Eccles constituency which included areas represented by Hilaire Belloc, Liberal MP for Salford South 1906-1910, friend of G K Chesterton, churchman, politician and lover of good ale. Chris and Geoff led a successful residents’ campaign to get a new community pub as an alternative to the awful Whitbread house up the road. As Geoff pulled the first pint he quoted Belloc – “When you have lost your inns, go and drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.” Little wonder that one of the leading lights of the Salford Campaign for Real Ale wanted Geoff to be canonised.

As Chair of Age Concern Barnsley he played a key role in the expansion of the organisation and subsequently did the same as Vice-Chair of Bradford Nightstop.

Geoff has never been afraid of difficult situations. He spent the night of the 2001 Bradford riots on White Abbey Road with the Rector of Manningham and the Director of Bradford Community Broadcasting, at one point retreating from the bus shelter into somebody’s front room as the petrol bombs rained down behind the police lines. The following morning he was helping churches come to terms with the night’s events and was at the heart of helping the churches respond to what had happened.

Geoff did have previous experience of riots, none of which were his fault. In Barnsley the riot was known as the Miners’ Strike and a group of Methodists wrote a book about it, in which Geoff wrote the chapter on the South Yorkshire Police, which he was inspired to look at again over the last few weeks. During the strike he had his disagreements with the Miners’ national leadership but at a meeting to look at the after effects he chided the Secretary of State for Energy, Peter Walker, for going over the top in his demonisation of Arthur Scargill. The Secretary of State said that he had “never heard such disgraceful words from a Methodist minister in his life” – a comment which Geoff has cherished ever since as a badge of honour.

Geoff was the Chaplain to the Lord Mayor, Councillor Allan Irvine Hillary and in 2008 he became an Honorary Ecumenical Canon of Bradford Cathedral. In 2009, the year of his retirement, he received a Community Harmony Award. In 2010 he was elected as a Councillor in Eccleshill and re-elected in 2014. He has been Group Chair since 2011. Also since 2011, he has chaired Eccleshill Community Association, based at Eccleshill Mechanics Institute.
He has been a member of Standards Committee since he joined the Council. He has also served on Bradford Planning, Children’s Services Scrutiny and Bradford East Area Committee. He was a member of the West Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority until its abolition and has also been a member of Bradford SACRE (Standing Committee on Religious Education).
Geoff is the only member of the Council active in Bradford CAMRA, having been a member of the Campaign for Real Ale since the early 1980s. He appeared in the 1992 Good Beer Guide following a successful campaign for a community pub in Salford.  Understandably therefore his favourite tipple is real ale (draught or bottle-conditioned), but he does enjoy the occasional Island malt whisky.

He is a long-time student of public transport organisation, having received his first bus timetable at the age of seven, which stimulated a friendship with the late Councillor Stanley King. He is the only person I know who considers it OK to test ones knowledge of local bus services through the Lib Dem pub quiz.

While at Newcastle University, Geoff was described by a President of the Methodist Conference as a “synthesiser” who could bring very different ideas together to see what happened. His nearest and dearest say that sometimes they have no idea what he’s on about but in general terms he is normally worth listening to. I think that is a sentiment which members of the local constituency party and the Liberal Democrat Council Group would share. He also specialises in bringing very different people together in the same room, a skill which has had a bearing on his contribution to Bradford over the last two decades.

It feels right that Geoff now takes up the mantle of civic leadership in Bradford. He is intertwined in its history, has knowledge of its public transport systems and real ale that it is second to none. Geoff has made a substantial contribution to the District’s progress through faith, through collaboration with others and through politics. I ask that you support his nomination to be the Lord Mayor of Bradford for the Civic year 2016-2017.

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