“He was in every sense of the word one of this city’s very best councillors”
Tributes have been paid to a former Mayor and long-serving councillor who has died at the age of 87. Councillor Alan Dowson died earlier this week.
Cllr Dowson had represented Labour in Fletton and Woodston since 2016 and briefly served as Mayor of Peterborough between 2022 and 2023.
Leading the tributes, Cllr Shabina Qayyum, Leader of Peterborough City Council, said: “Alan took my hand when the trials and tribulations of Politics were so personally upsetting due to the pandemic, where I helped him with looking after his late wife, Annie, and generally the challenges that women from ethnic minority backgrounds face in this field.
“He made me his consort when he became the Mayor in 2022 and gave me a platform to stand by his side and assist him in this role that he loved. You see, Alan was truly the People’s Mayor and Councillor, and he shared many, many stories of his life, starting in Middlesbrough and his early days when the new towns were built.
“He was a teacher with his wife Annie at the College on Brook Street and told me how he would stop people from diverse backgrounds in the street, encouraging them to enrol at the college and give themselves an education, something he was so very passionate about.”
Cllr Dowson was born in Middlesborough but moved to Peterborough in 1968. He previously served in the RAF and also worked as a lecturer at Peterborough Regional College before moving to the College of Adult Education in 1975. He left the college in 2000 and became an education consultant. He retired in 2016.
He was first elected to the council in 1971 and represented several wards. He was involved in several heritage projects and as a member of the Peterborough Civic Society, played an active role in saving 16 historic buildings during the Queensgate development in the 1980s.
Cllr Qayyum continued: “He shared some adventurous stories of his lifetime in Politics and how he was a Parliamentary Candidate on more than one occasion. How he tested the will of Council officers by using dye to demonstrate that drains were indeed blocked at Hobsons, and how, when he was addressing a crowd as a Parliamentary Candidate, the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, walked in, and he had to stop in his tracks.
“But perhaps the most significant legacy of Alan’s life was that he was a Nuclear Test Veteran on Christmas Island in 1958, where, as a 19-year-old, he and others witnessed the detonations of thermonuclear bombs in the Pacific. He received his Medal in the second-class post only a few years ago and lived for seeking justice for the Nuclear Test Veterans and their offspring who were affected by the radiation from those bombs, known as the ‘LABRATS’.”
During his time as a councillor, he was involved in the installation of two memorials in Central Park in 2024, honouring those who lost their lives, and those who are still suffering from Britain’s nuclear testing programme in the 1950s and 60s. It’s thought that these memorials are the first of their kind in the country.
Cllr Qayyum concluded: “Alan was a friend to everyone. He was a true Socialist in every sense of the word and wanted to be remembered as such. He was so very loved in his ward by his residents. He fought big wars over however small a campaign in his ward and across the city, was a voice of the voiceless, stood on the picket lines alongside workers, adored his friends in the Palmerston Arms and was a Labour man through and through.
“He was loyal to the party he loved and remained loyal to his dying day. He was in every sense of the word one of this city’s very best councillors. He paid tribute to those before him and commemorated the Late Charlie Swift and Audrey Chalmers during his time as Mayor and if anything, I never ever thought as Leader it would now fall upon me to write these words upon his own passing.
“The Labour Group and I, alongside all other councillors across the political spectrum, will truly miss Alan. I’m comforted by the thought that he will now join his beloved wife Annie, as he missed her so very much. I would like Peterborough to join me in paying tribute to this giant of a man, Councillor Alan Dowson. The thanks and debt of gratitude I and many others owe to him for his monumental service to this city and its residents is simply not enough to put into words. He leaves an endowment of public service to this city that is unmatched.”
