Mayor Brian Prichard dies in office

It might seem rather curious to enter an obituary about a Tory Mayor on a Labour website, but there is good reason. Brian, who died on the night of 6/7 April, 2010, was the last in a long family line of Prichards, who served as councillors on Battersea Borough Council, Wandsworth Council, the London County Council and the Greater London Council.

The first, his grandfather, became a councillor just before WW1; the most famous his father, Sir Norman Prichard, served until he died in office; his uncle was a Battersea and LCC councillor and Brian, the last in the line, was first a Labour councillor and then a Tory. In all they were councillors for over 150 years and there were less than 10 years in the whole of the 20th century when there was not a Prichard councillor in the Borough.

Brian was an up-right, God fearing, responsible member of the community; he was notorious as the first teetotaller Mayor; a man who insisted at the various Mayoral receptions in having a large notice next to the tray of wine saying “Alcohol can do serious damage to your health”.

That may sound humourless but if you knew Brian it was the absolute opposite. It was his way of humanising his rather puritanical attitudes to many elements of life including his politics.

In the 70's, Brian was pitch-forked into the turbulence of the Housing Finance Act and what he thought of as the illegality of so-called non-implementation of a Tory law. It was clear that he went through much soul searching and political re-consideration. What is more he came under a certain amount of attack from his young, leftish colleagues, one of whom publicly challenged him to go where his heart clearly was and join the Tory party.

Brian took the hint and in 1973 some few months before the 1974 Council election he resigned as a Labour councillor only to be re-elected a few months later as a Tory councillor. Unlike many politicians, who have crossed the floor and not put themselves before the electorate, Brian, to his credit, stood the democratic test and waited to be re-elected in his own right as a Conservative.

Not that he was able to cast aside all of his Labour attitudes and some of the most enjoyable occasions in recent Wandsworth history was to watch Brian with his censorious attitude to drugs of all descriptions, legal or not, in debate with some of the Tory libertarians, of whom there are many on Wandsworth Council.

Brian was ascetic, puritanical and censorious, but he was a man of nice judgement, considerable intellect, as evidenced by his professional medical career and of some honour. Wandsworth Council will miss him.