Tributes paid to veteran councillor Bill Ashbridge

Aug 12 2009 by David Black, The Journal

TRIBUTES were paid yesterday to the passion and dedication of a veteran Northumberland politician whose public service spanned 27 years.

Bill Ashbridge – who died peacefully at his Bedlington home on Sunday at the age of 80 – was chairman of the county council in 1993/94 and a senior member of the Labour group which controlled the authority for almost 20 years.

The retired factory convener was a Labour Party member for more than 50 years, and chaired the county council social services committee from when he was first elected in May 1981 until 1999.

However, he resigned from Labour in May 2008 when he failed to win the party’s nomination to contest his Bedlington East seat at that month’s poll for Northumberland’s new unitary council.

Mr Ashbridge was one of several Labour stalwarts to lose out when party officials imposed all-women shortlists in their wards, or preferred a female candidate to a sitting male councillor.