My partner, Ian Laidlaw-Dickson, who has died aged 75 of a rare form of cancer, was an election agent and a former senior Labour party councillor in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, alongside a career as a manager with BT.
Ian was a member of the Labour party for almost 50 years, having joined in 1974 when Harold Wilson was the prime minister.
He served in many roles, both elected and voluntary. He represented Adeyfield East on Dacorum borough council for eight years (1979-87). From 1993 he was a Hertfordshire county councillor for 16 years, during which time he was appointed to the police authority, which he chaired for five years. He supported the establishment of neighbourhood policing in Hertfordshire as a member of the authority, which undertook the role now performed by the police and crime commissioner. In 2010 Ian was appointed OBE.
His party roles included being chair of Hemel Hempstead constituency Labour party, election agent, conference delegate and branch treasurer. He was also an active member of his trade union, which in later years became Prospect.
Ian was the son of Donald, a journalist and writer on model cars and aeroplanes, and Frantiska (nee Benish), who had worked for a time as a translator for Reuters. His parents had met and married in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where Donald was working temporarily, before fleeing the city at the start of the second world war. Eventually they managed to reach London and then settled in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, where Ian was born. After the war Frantiska learned that her parents, Emile and Olga, had been killed in a Nazi concentration camp.
After attending Ashlyns school in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, Ian studied politics at the University of Sussex. He joined the telecommunications team of the Post Office as an apprentice in late 1971. The organisation went on to become British Telecom and Ian stayed with it, rising to middle-management positions and taking early retirement in 2002.
For the last 12 years he was a member of the boards of Community Action Dacorum and the Dacorum Emergency Night Shelter (DENS). Appreciated for his insight, knowledge and understanding of the bodies he served on, he worked hard to try to improve people’s lives.
An avid reader, Ian enjoyed visiting art galleries and the theatre. In the last 10 years we travelled to some amazing places; we met through the local Labour party after I moved to Hemel in 1980.
Ian donated his body to medical research. He is survived by me, our daughter Rebecca and granddaughter Arianna.
