Departing Leeds councillor Alison Lowe talks Labour, diversity and mental health
But during a farewell interview with the Yorkshire Evening Post, it is clear that Councillor Alison Lowe never wanted to simply slip into a safe, stoic mould created by those who came before her at Leeds City Council.
What is more, she has always intended compassion, honesty and a drive to diversify to be hallmarks of her near 30-year career in the city’s civic chamber – which she was the first black woman to be elected to in 1990 aged 25.
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Hide AdNow 54, at the local elections in May she will bow out as a member for Armley, which she has represented since day one, to concentrate on her job as chief executive at award-winning Leeds-based mental health charity Touchstone.
“You get overwhelmed, because it’s just so hard to keep on fighting the fight,” she admitted.
Coun Lowe grew up in Seacroft, a working class area with real poverty issues.
Her father, Alf Henry, was from the Caribbean island of St Kitts and her mother, Kay, was a Leeds-born trade unionist of Irish descent.
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Hide AdShe decided to try politics herself after Conservative MP Sir Keith Joseph represented Leeds North East until 1987, a position she could not understand because of the conditions she was seeing in that constituency.