My friend Fred Whitemore, who has died aged 79, was a former lord mayor of Canterbury and a major figure in Labour party politics in the city.
Fred was born in Bath, Somerset, to Olive (nee Barclay) and Leonard Whitmore, who were tenant farmers in Batheaston near Solsbury Hill. After leaving City of Bath boys’ school he read PPE at Worcester College, Oxford, and then did postgraduate research in British Labour history at Nuffield College, Oxford, before becoming an assistant lecturer in politics at the newly opened University of Kent, in Canterbury, in 1965. He immediately became a member of the university’s Labour Club and also of the Canterbury Labour party.
Prior to 1965, the party’s electoral performance in the city had been dire, but the creation of the university began to change all that, and Fred’s influence was important in a turnaround that led to outright Labour control of the council in 1972.
It was Fred, as much as anyone, who created the local political leadership that had been lacking before then. He brought sophisticated campaigning to the city, which culminated in the election of Rosie Duffield to the House of Commons in 2017 in a seat that had essentially been Conservative-held since 1868. He was a significant advocate for the city and an assiduous and skilled public representative with the patience to build alliances.
Elected as a councillor for the first time in 1972, Fred eventually led the Labour group, became chair of the housing committee, and stood (unsuccessfully) as a parliamentary candidate for the city in 1992.
One of his early victories was the use of major 1940s prefab housing sites for new social housing in Canterbury, in preference to the private housing that had originally been planned by the Conservatives. He also supported the creation of the Northgate Community Centre in one of the most deprived areas of the city.
Becoming lord mayor of the wider Canterbury district in 2001 during a period of Labour/Lib Dem control, he pressed the council to purchase the Ridlands Farm site for social housing, and it is now part of an area that is expected to be used for a new hospital for Canterbury.
A brilliant teacher, Fred retired from lecturing at the University of Kent in 2001, having been the chair of its politics board for a time and also senior tutor for the faculty of social sciences, monitoring the welfare of students. He had two separate spells in the US as a visiting professor at the University of Massachusetts and then Boston University.
After losing his council seat in 2007 Fred became one of the first lay members of the Cathedral Chapter, and also took on voluntary work as a cathedral guide.
