My father, Donald Chesterman, who has died aged 88, took a central role in campaigning and organising for the Labour party in West Yorkshire across five decades.
He was strongly attached to the town and community of Cleckheaton, at the centre of West Yorkshire, where he was born and always lived. As the only child of Stanley, an engineering worker, and Annie (nee Breaks), he was able to attend Whitcliffe Mount grammar school, his parents managing to find the six guineas a year required to support his scholarship. Despite a serious bout of pneumonia, he gained his school certificate and became a trainee accountant at 16.
He volunteered for the RAF in 1944, aged 17, and was stationed with South East Asia Command at Kandy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and later in Malaya and Singapore. After being promoted to sergeant at the age of 20 he was demobbed in 1948. On his return he met Joan Beever, a shorthand typist, and they married in 1950. Joan introduced him to the Labour party and Donald first stood for Spenborough council in 1959, losing by one vote. He was elected in 1961, and between then and 1990 served 23 years in Spenborough and its successor authority, Kirklees. Later both he and Joan were honoured with life membership of the Labour party.
Donald’s interests were always in unglamorous but vital activities, ones important to many people – planning, markets, refuse collection, highways. He chaired the environmental health and planning committees at Kirklees. At both Spenborough and Kirklees he turned down invitations to be mayor; he was naturally reserved, and ceremonials held little appeal. Nothing pleased him more than practical local politics, helping constituents, and the camaraderie of organising parliamentary and council election campaigns. He was proud of his local reputation for integrity and decency, and continued to engage in local affairs after retiring from Kirklees.
From 1964 Donald had been a magistrate on the Dewsbury bench, and he was also chair of the governors of his old primary school, Whitcliffe Road. Into his 80s he was still working hard, caring for Joan, who had Alzheimer’s, and supporting other friends in practical ways.
He is survived by me and my sister, Lynne, and by his grandchildren Joe, Frank, Zoe and Luke.
