Not a typical Croydon Tory: John Cartwright in his Loony Party outfit
Inside Croydon puts great store in “doing the right thing”, and our local hero (cue Knopfler guitar music) for the past week is therefore John Cartwright.
A relatively new member of the Croydon Conservative party, Cartwright did the right thing this week when in a comment posted on this site, he accused the Mayor of Croydon, Ashburton councillor Eddy Arram, of bullying a member of the public in the gallery during a Town Hall meeting.
It was, Cartwright said, “the most outrageous and contemptible thing I have ever witnessed in 15 years of attending council meetings”.
By speaking out, Cartwright broke the cosy consensus within the Croydon Tories which through inaction had condoned Mayor Arram’s petulant and boorish public conduct over the previous 12 months. Maybe the Tories’ collective silence had something to do with the fact that during his mayoralty, Arram continued to work as Gavin’s gofer, a constituency worker for Gavin Barwell MP. Or maybe they were all just too cowed to act.
In the past, Cartwright had been a habitual candidate in elections in Croydon under his alternative identity, John Loony, when standing for the Monster Raving Loony Party. Now, Cartwright has brought a degree of decency and, we would suggest, commonsense to the local Tories.
His comments went national, with the website Political Scrapbook, and the Guardian‘s political diary both reporting on Cartwright’s condemnation of the Croydon Mayor, which included a call for Arram to be de-selected as a candidate for the local elections next year.
In doing so, Cartwright may have put at risk hopes he might have had in being selected to stand for his new party next year, a small but worthy act of conscience ahead of ambition. For which he is Inside Croydon’s Hero of the Week.
- Inside Croydon’s Hero of the Week: Marzia Nicodemi-Ehikioya
- Attention-seeking mayor deserves the Advertiser’s criticism
- Who is your choice as Inside Croydon Hero of the Week? Send your nominations for this prize-less accolade to inside.croydon@btinternet.com with “Hero of the Week” in the subject field, and no more than 200 words on why you think they deserve recognition for the actions in the previous seven days. And please include a daytime contact phone number
